


Post Season 12 Hellatus Rewatch

by mittensmorgul (MittenWraith)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Archived From Mittensmorgul Blog, Archived From Tumblr, Meta Essay, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 11:44:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 68
Words: 55,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16872333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MittenWraith/pseuds/mittensmorgul
Summary: A collection of tumblr posts I made while rewatching the entire series during the post s12 hellatus.





	1. Chapter 1

[Jun 7, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/161548457490/the-tnt-loop-has-looped-again-back-to-s1-each)

31 notes

The TNT loop has… looped again. Back to s1. Each time it’s more shocking to return to Baby Sam and Smol Dean, but wow. After all the character growth for Dean in s12, and Sam finally stepping up as a leader in the way that traditionally felt to Dean, watching s1 again is a revelation.

Dean talking about his issues he’s been holding in since he was a child in 1.03, Sam hearing about some of Dean’s issues (at that time) about his jealousy that Sam was able to get out of the life for a short time, was able to stand up to John, while Dean just felt trapped there…

 **Shapeshifter Dean:**  It’s funny. I kind of understand him. He’s all alone—close to no one. All he wants is for someone to love him. He’s like me. You know, everybody needs a little human touch now and then. It’s so hard to be different.

But in early s1, Dean was living that performance 24/7 because it was his only coping mechanism for all of that.

Heck all of the shapeshifter episodes are literally an exposition on performing Dean. This is the first time I’ve gone into a series rewatch feeling like we’re actually getting somewhere with all of this, too. That by the time I get to the end again Dean will have really shed some of these layers he’d wrapped himself in and begun to reconcile the core issues that he’d been guarding from the world his entire life.

Original tags: s12 hellatus rewatch, not to be confused with the s12 meta rewatch..., performing dean, spn 1.03, spn 1.06


	2. Chapter 2

[Jun 14, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/161815909760/im-watching-203-again-so-many-daddy-issues-but)

21 notes

I’m watching 2.03 again… so many daddy issues… But there’s also this:

**GORDON** : Know why I love this life?  
 **DEAN** : Hmm?  
 **GORDON** : It’s all black and white. There’s no maybe. You find the bad thing, kill it. See, most people spend their lives in shades of gray. Is this right? Is that wrong? Not us.

And I’m feeling compelled to make some sort of “black and white and red all over” joke.

I’m trying to resist re-meta’ing this entire loop through the series, because I just did that, but I’ll be making these little reminder posts when something clobbers me in the face.

Poor Lenore though. She deserved so much better. She was TRYING to be more mainstream; more human. Until the Big Boss showed up in s6 and overrode all the lil monsters’ free will, because that’s what it came down to with Eve. Heck I’m having flashbacks to the last rewatch post I made of this episode and feeling like I’ve said all of this before.

But since we do see Lenore again in 6.19, and some of her final acts of free will are to tell them where they can find Eve, and then asking to be put out of her misery because she DOESN’T want to lose her free will, her ability to choose to not kill people just to survive.

Which is really creepy, because Gordon just used the same phrase I did:  _put her out of her misery_. Thing is, Lenore WASN’T miserable back then. She just wanted to be left alone to live her life with her nest, to live like normal people without fear of being hunted just because of what they were.

And we saw this theme over and over again in s12, that it’s not what you  _are_ , but what you  _do_ that’s really important.

With Jack now redefining the basis of what it’s even possible to BE, a true hybrid being, it leaves everything from the past, every preconception about the supposedly-inherent nature of a nephilim, up for inspection in the same way that 2.03 showed us that their preconceptions about the fundamental nature of vampires (or really any type of creature that is “other” than human) isn’t hardwired into their being. They can choose to be different. Like Castiel has when his free will hasn’t been hijacked (see what I did there?).

(which is a fascinating concept considering the very next episode is about the monstrosity of humanity, which I also wrote about in the last go-around of rewatch notes, so I should probably just stop typing now… :P)

  

Original Tags: s12 hellatus rewatch, spn 2.03, that's what free will is


	3. Chapter 3

[Jun 14, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/161819152245/sighs-im-watching-205-and-being-smacked-in)

35 notes

*sighs* I’m watching 2.05, and being smacked in the face by just how much Dabb has pulled from Ben Edlund’s episodes in the major themes of s12.

Right from the cold open, we watch as Dr. Jenkins receives a “call” with specific instructions that somehow overpower his free will. It doesn’t change his personality or beliefs or turn him into some sort of zombie, but he nevertheless carries out a series of actions that lead directly to his death, despite Sam attempting to interfere with his vision of those events and stop them from coming true. But while Sam believes that Dr. Jenkins has been “saved,” and is therefore now SAFE, he receives another call telling him to walk in front of a bus. There was nothing Sam could do to stop the bus…

**SAM** : I kept him out of the gun store. I thought he was okay. I thought he was past it, at least… I should have stayed with him.

And… that sounds eerily similar– at least thematically– to the last 10 minutes or so of 12.23 and what happened with Cas, no?

Cas metaphorically walked out in front of the bus.

Also in 2.05, mentioned here for no particular reason, as they leave the Roadhouse, Dean sings “Can’t Fight This Feeling” to Sam’s eternal horror. :P

Later in the episode, the same thing happens to Dean. HE WILLINGLY HANDS THE KEYS TO BABY OVER TO ANDY WITHOUT QUESTION. JUST BECAUSE HE ASKED FOR THEM. How much meta has been written over the years about Baby as a symbol for the state of Dean’s soul? Yet he offers ZERO resistance to Andy’s request, because Andy had this power to get what he wanted from people.

Dean was lucky that Andy had no intention of KEEPING Baby, he just wanted to take her for a joyride. But in 12.19, Jack seemed to have no compunction about “keeping” Cas for his own purposes, regardless of what Cas may have chosen or wanted for himself.

Mind control, man. He full-on Obi Wan’ed me.

Plus the entire undercurrent about the s2 Special Children arc was Sam’s ongoing fear that he might not always be able to control his powers, that he might really “go darkside.” Through no fault of his own, he was terrified that he’d be manipulated into using his powers for horrible purposes, that maybe just having these powers in the first place would eventually make him evil.

And then it turns out in 2.05 that Andy has an “evil twin” with the same powers to influence people’s minds, but something about who he is as a person– a very different person to his twin who was content with his life– meant he had no reservations about using his powers to kill people, to harm people, just for his own twisted ends.

Without going on about the duality, the nature of free will vs succumbing to someone else’s will, and where the line between “choosing” to do something and being pushed into it because all your other options have been taken away really lies.

*Fell On Black Days plays us out into 2.06*

 

 

Original Tags: spn 2.05, spn 12.19, spn 12.23, actual quote i just used elsewhere: Damn Ben Edlund, this is an andrew dabb appreciation blog (except when it comes to car stuff), seriously i can see dabb's heart eyes for edlund all over s12, s12 hellatus rewatch


	4. Chapter 4

[Jun 20, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/162050406230/i-am-watching-222-and-everything-is-terrible)

23 notes

I am watching 2.22 and everything is terrible. Please share my suffering. Sam’s having a quick lil lie down:

**Dean:**  You know, when we were little— and you couldn’t been more than 5— you just started asking questions. How come we didn’t have a mom? Why do we always have to move around? Where’d Dad go when he’d take off for days at a time? I remember I begged you, “Quit asking, Sammy. Man, you don’t want to know.” I just wanted you to be a kid… Just for a little while longer. I always tried to protect you… Keep you safe… Dad didn’t even have to tell me. It was just always my responsibility, you know? It’s like I had one job… I had one job… And I screwed it up. (pause) I blew it. And for that, I’m sorry. I guess that’s what I do. I let down the people I love. I let Dad down. And now I guess I’m just supposed to let you down, too. How can I? How am I supposed to live with that? What am I supposed to do? Sammy. God. What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do?! 

This is honestly what Dean thought of himself. He had ONE JOB. But just as Mary was destined to make the deal with Azazel back in 1973, like Mary was always destined to die the night Azazel returned to drip blood into Sam’s mouth, Dean was ALWAYS destined to fail at this job… It was  _never his fault_.

It takes him a lot longer to even begin to believe that. The threat of going to hell throughout s3 starts that process, but even after he dies and is resurrected (on God’s orders!) in 4.01, he still refuses to believe it completely. Because what would that mean? If Dean began to accept that it wasn’t his fault? Whose fault was it then?

Mary’s? Could he really lay that much blame at her feet? It wasn’t ever really HER fault either. She’d been just as horrifyingly used by the universe as he was.

Sam’s? Oh dear me no. Nononono. It was never Sam’s fault.

John’s? Well, some of it was John’s fault, and Dean does address a lot of John’s parenting (or lack thereof) throughout the series. He gets to come to a very personal understanding of John and the terrible choices he’d had to make by getting to travel several hundred thousand miles in his shoes, looking out for Sammy. Saving people, hunting things. Carrying on the family business. Like Tasha Banes says in 12.20, “Family’s always complicated. Parents always seem smart and strong and perfect. It’s only when you grow up that you realize that they’re just people.”

By the end of s5 he’s at least laying the blame on the machinations of angels and demons, but it doesn’t make him feel like any less of a failure for not being able to stop them, for not being able to save every last human from the mess the universe built around him and his family.

But wait, there’s more!

The next five seasons are just an extension of the Winchesters trying to fix all the damage (Cosmic Consequences!) still lingering from that original plan to end the world. S6 is the direct fallout of the angels’ Apocalypse Reorganization attempt, the angelic civil war, the mad and desperate power grab to stop that happening at all costs. S7 was the extension of THAT, with the Winchesters scrambling to clean up yet another cosmic mess. S8 was the extension of THAT with Crowley’s new attempt to restructure the universe in his favor while Naomi tried to do the same for Heaven. S9 brings more Cosmic Cleanup, with Dean taking the burden for all of it on himself by taking the Mark and finally becoming the weapon he’s always thought of himself as… until the Mark takes him over and steals his humanity. S10 is his struggle to regain that humanity (hijacked by the narrative into a discovery of the true source of all of Dean’s problems).

It’s not until s11 that Dean FINALLY begins to see where the true blame for EVERYTHING lies– with the original rift between creation and destruction, between God and the Darkness, between Chuck and Amara. And he’s able to FIX IT.

It takes him most of s12 for both him and Mary to truly begin to understand why she was resurrected, that they both were given this new perspective on everything that had made their lives into what they were, so they could finally stop blaming themselves for… everything.

 

 

Original Tags: spn 2.22, spn 12.22, oh dean, mary f. winchester, cosmic. consequences., s12 hellatus rewatch


	5. Chapter 5

[Jun 22, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/162127040430/sooo-rewatching-306-i-can-already-hear-yalls)

65 notes

Sooo, rewatching 3.06. I can already hear y’all’s eyes rolling and see y’all’s painful groaning and muttering about  _not the dumb ghost ship_. But forget all that bit. I just want to focus on the Sam and Dean bit at the end of the episode. 

At the beginning of the episode, Dean confronted Sam about having gone after the crossroads demon he sold his soul to. Sam’s still trying to find a way to save Dean from Hell, but Dean of course is still trying to talk him out of it (because if he breaks the deal, Sam dies). At the end, Dean admits he understands why Sam went after her, saying he would’ve done the same thing so he can’t blame Sam for that.

Dean has so far framed his entire reasoning around this in a “parental” way, believing that Sam will be okay after he’s gone, framing all of their discussions on the topic in an “I know what’s best” way even when Sam accuses him explicitly of doing the same thing John did to him (i.e. putting Dean textually into the parental role in the scenario). In a weird reversal of the promise Sam elicits from Dean at the end of s5 to go live a “normal, apple pie life” because that’s the life SAM always wanted, Dean encourages Sam to keep hunting, carrying on the Family Business that DEAN has always wanted.

**DEAN** : Yeah, you’ll keep hunting, y'know, you live your life. You’re stronger than me. You are! (SAM clears his throat) you are… you’ll get over it. But I want you to know I’m sorry, I’m sorry for… putting you through all this, I am.  
 **SAM** : You know what, Dean? Go screw yourself.  
 **DEAN** : What?  
 **SAM** : I don’t want an apology from you! And by the way, I’m a big boy now, I can take care of myself.

But it’s like Sam doesn’t understand that Dean’s playing the parental role, even while calling him out on the fact. He doesn’t get that Dean’s not just following exactly in John’s footsteps, but that his motivations for doing so were identical to John’s… Watch out for Sammy. Look after your little brother.

At least Sam finally expresses his real concern about Dean:

**SAM** (voice raising): So would you please quit worrying about me? I mean that’s the whole problem in the first place. I don’t want you to worry about me, Dean, I want you to worry about you! I want you to give a crap that you’re dying!

But in 3.07 Dean proves he still doesn’t give a crap that he’s dying, using himself as bait for the vampire, as bait for Gordon and Kubrick, and casually risking his life over and over again. It’s exactly what the vampire says about his own life:

**VAMPIRE** : I was desperate! You ever felt desperate? (shot of DEAN’s face) I’ve lost everyone I ever loved. I’m staring down eternity alone. (shot of DEAN’s face) Can you think of a worse hell?  
 **DEAN** : Well, there’s Hell.  
 **VAMPIRE** : I wasn’t thinking. I just … I didn’t care anymore. Do you know it’s like when you just don’t give a damn? It’s like … it’s like being dead already. So just go ahead. (looks down at DEAN’s knife) Do it.

But it’s also the situation that SAM will be left in after Dean goes to Hell… his entire family gone, all alone. And suddenly Dean understands there might be worse things than actual Hell.

He’s still not ready to drop the act in front of Sam. I mean, Sam uses the exact words:

**SAM** : I wish you would drop the show and be my brother again. 

And the worst part of all of this is it takes  _nine more years_  for Dean to really get any sort of resolution to this. Yelling at the dream demon version of himself might be a lil bit cathartic, and he might come to a greater understanding of all the circumstances that led to the Winchester family feeling “cursed,” but it takes him actually confronting Mary with the entire truth in 12.22 to finally let all of this go.

Yes, 12.22 has officially changed everything.

 

 

Original Tags: spn 3.06, spn 3.07, winchester family dynamics, performing dean, spn 12.22, s12 hellatus rewatch


	6. Chapter 6

[pickles because of lizbob's tags >.>](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/i-will-now-spend-the-rest-of-the-night-cackling-about-satan%27s-pickles-because-of-lizbob%27s-tags-%3E.%3E)

[Jun 23, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/162170635505/elizabethrobertajones-2x02-for-mittensmorgul)

68 notes

  
[ ](https://66.media.tumblr.com/a6f6bdb0d64fdca1d49c9b366faf6806/tumblr_os0a92Od7E1tsvn0go1_540.gif)   


  
[ ](https://66.media.tumblr.com/709b04e7ea8dfc9377c918bd45172de8/tumblr_os0a92Od7E1tsvn0go2_540.gif)   


  
[ ](https://66.media.tumblr.com/5991a3afe550a850ad3f1363f3b7c7c0/tumblr_os0a92Od7E1tsvn0go3_540.gif)   


  
[ ](https://66.media.tumblr.com/2d99b0e133195f12b6f54622a6305073/tumblr_os0a92Od7E1tsvn0go4_540.gif)   


[elizabethrobertajones](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/162164702268/2x02-for-mittensmorgul-who-pointed-out-that):

> **2x02**
> 
> For [@mittensmorgul](https://tmblr.co/mH08bFF21ewTCayiwIXZEOg), who pointed out that there are a dire lack of gifs of this van

Oh gosh my favorite starburst light is there too how did I not remember that? Like the one from the Roadhouse in 11.04… D:

Also, I love that for whatever reason (was the van’s radio stuck on the Easy Listening station? did it have a tape stuck in the player? Was the radio stuck on?) they were listening to “Do That To Me One More Time” by The Captain and Tennille. Like, WHY?!

Did Dean just think that he needed to turn his suffering up to 11, and that was the way to go about it? That van was his version of Purgatory in that episode, I think. Everything about that van was self-flagellating penance.

 

 

Original Tags:

  * spn 2.02 
  * i love those dumb starburst lamps 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch




	7. Chapter 7

[Jul 3, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/162554789835/mittensmorgul-is-watching-421-and-crying-about)

16 notes

[mittensmorgul](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/162554045235/is-watching-421-and-crying-about-sams):

> *is watching 4.21 and crying about Sam’s hallucination of Mary*

no really this is the worst thing ever… Sam’s own mind is generating this vision of Mary, while going through demon blood withdrawal.

**SAM** : You’re disappointed. You never thought I’d turn out this way. I’m a piss-poor excuse for a son. Your heart is broken. Am I close?  
 **MARY** : Not at all. You’re doing the right thing, Sam. What you’re doing is brave. You’re not being crazy, you’re being practical. Sam, I am so proud of you.  
 **SAM** : But—but Dean—  
 **MARY** : Your brother doesn’t understand. I was raised a hunter from a long line. We understand that there are gonna be hard choices. And we do what we have to to get the job done. Yes, our family is cursed. But you—you have the power to turn it into a gift. You can use it against them.  
 **SAM** : For revenge?  
 **MARY** : No, for justice. I know how scared you are.  
 **SAM** : What’s in me, Mom, it's—  
 **MARY** : Evil. And you know it.  
 **SAM** : What if it’s stronger than me? Look at me. What if Dean’s right?  
 **MARY** : Dean can never know how strong you are, because Dean is weak. Look at what he’s done to you. Locking you in here? He’s terrified. He’s in over his head. You have to go on without him. You have what it takes. You have to kill Lilith.  
 **SAM** : Even if it kills me.  
 **MARY** : Make my death mean something. I’m counting on you, Sam. Don’t let anyone or anything get in your way. Not even Dean.

* * *

He KNOWS what’s inside him is evil, yet he honestly believes that using that power for “good” and killing Lilith can save the world. But the entire foundation of that belief is based on a huge lie.

Cas had discovered the truth in 4.20 but was stopped from sharing that information with Sam and Dean, dragged back to Heaven and reprogrammed into taking actions that are shocking and appalling even to him… like releasing Sam from his demon detox, securing an oath from Dean to be loyal to Heaven, and arranging a meeting with Anna that resulted in her capture (and subsequent torture and reprogramming) by Heaven.

Choice went out the window, and everyone’s doing what they believe they have to do…

**BOBBY** : Correct me if I’m wrong, but you willingly signed up to be the angels’ bitch? I’m sorry. You prefer ‘sucker’? After everything you said about them, now you trust them?  
 **DEAN** : Come on, give me a little credit, Bobby. I’ve never trusted them less. I mean, they come on like shady politicians from planet Vulcan.  
 **BOBBY** : Then why in the hell did you—  
 **DEAN** : Because what other option do I have? It’s either trust the angels or let Sammy trust a demon?

The worst is probably Sam’s hallucination of Dean, angry and accusatory, calling him a monster, telling him he’s evil, that he’s nothing, while the real Dean is upstairs pleading with Bobby for Sam’s life, arguing that if the detox kills him then at least he dies human. He doesn’t think Sam’s a monster, and is desperate to save him from becoming one.

After Cas releases Sam because of his “orders,” he tells Anna TWICE that she shouldn’t have come to meet him. He tries to warn her that it’s a trap in the only way his orders allow him to, and then can’t even look at her when she realizes the other angels are there to take her away.

I know I’ve written all of this out before, but this hurts so much after the end of s12.

 

 

Original Tags:

  * s12 hellatus rewatch
  * spn 4.21
  * sam fucking winchester 
  * castiel winchester 
  * the special agony of brainwashing




	8. Chapter 8

[i mean the kinda sorta went with the ghost ship redux but >.>](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/i-mean-the-kinda-sorta-went-with-the-ghost-ship-redux-but-%3E.%3E)

[Jul 4, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/162592704185/hello-i-would-like-to-discuss-501-please)

71 notes

Hello, I would like to discuss 5.01 please.

Specifically, what convinced God to resurrect Cas. Let’s start closer to the beginning of the episode, shall we? When Lucifer was released, our understanding is that God booped them onto that airplane (even though they wrongly suspect it was angels at first). So what’s the FIRST thing Sam and Dean decide to do with their newfound not-deadness?

**DEAN** : All right, well, first things first—How did we end up on Soul Plane?  
 **SAM** : Angels, maybe? I mean, you know, beaming us out of harm’s way?  
 **DEAN** : Well, whatever. It’s the least of our worries. We need to find Cas.

So they drive straight for the last place they saw Cas: Chuck’s house.

**DEAN** : Where’s Cas?  
 **CHUCK** : He’s dead. Or gone. The archangel smote the crap out of him. I’m sorry.  
 **DEAN** : You’re sure? I mean, maybe he just vanished into the light or something.  
 **CHUCK** : Oh, no. He, like, exploded. Like a water balloon of chunky soup.

The chat continues, but essentially, Chuck witnesses EVERYTHING that goes down next. Not that he probably hasn’t been watching everything that’s gone on in the Winchesters’ lives all along, because omniscience, but this time he’s standing  _right there_.

**DEAN** : Cas, you stupid bastard.  
 **SAM** : Stupid? He was trying to help us.  
 **DEAN** : Yeah, exactly.

(which is pretty much identical to Dean’s chat with Bobby right after Cas walks into the reservoir in 7.02, while he’s folding up Cas’s coat like a widow folding a flag:

[DEAN picks up CASTIEL’s trenchcoat, which had floated to the edge of the reservoir.]  
 **DEAN** : Okay. So he’s gone.  
 **BOBBY** : Yeah. Rest in peace. If that’s in the cards.  
[DEAN folds the trenchcoat and looks down at it sadly.]  
 **DEAN** : Dumb son of a bitch.  
 **BOBBY** : Well, he was friends with us, wasn’t he? Can’t get much dumber than that. Come on, those things will be coming up for air soon.

but back to 5.01 now)

Chuck warns them that the angels are coming, and Zachariah shows up with some henchmen. Despite the fact that Dean and Cas had JUST REBELLED against Zachariah’s plans in 4.22, and the fact that Cas was smote (probably by Raphael) for disobedience and Dean had just watched Chuck pull  _Cas’s tooth out of his own hair_ , DEAN STILL STANDS UNWAVERING UNDER ZACHARIAH’S ORDERS, even knowing how powerful the angels are.

In the span of one scene, Dean calls Zachariah and the angels “asshat,” “sons of bitches,” tells him to “Cram it with walnuts, ugly,” calls him “two-faced douche” and then “dicks.”

That’s a lot of insulting. Like, every time Dean opens his mouth, an angry insult flies out. That is A LOT of confidence for a measly mortal to show in the face of angels. But as we learn next, Dean did have an insurance policy he set up in anticipation of an angel showing up– the angel banishing sigil.

**DEAN** : Oh, yeah—a little insurance policy in case you dicks showed up.  
[DEAN slaps his bloody hand on an Angel Banishing Sigil drawn behind a door.]  
 **ZACHARIAH** : No!  
[SAM and CHUCK flinch. ZACHARIAH vanishes in white light. When DEAN looks, the other ANGELS are gone as well.]  
 **DEAN** : Learned that from my friend Cas, you son of a bitch.

The reaction shot goes to Chuck, who informs us all that “This sucks ass.”

Yet Chuck nudges Sam and Dean off on their road of discovery, where they encounter Zachariah and company again at the Castle Storage. Zach attempts to torture Sam and Dean into Dean agreeing to say yes to Michael, until Cas shows up and disrupts his fun.

**ZACHARIAH** : How are you…  
 **CASTIEL** : Alive? That’s a good question. How did these two end up on that airplane? Another good question. ‘Cause the angels didn’t do it. I think we both know the answer, don’t we?  
 **ZACHARIAH** : No. That’s not possible.  
 **CASTIEL** : It scares you. Well, it should. Now, put these boys back together and go. I won’t ask twice.

So an implied invocation of God here is enough to frighten Zachariah off, at least for now. Even though Cas’s powers have been severely limited now (he’s been “cut off from Heaven,” put in a situation where he’s forced to begin learning some of the limitations of humanity for himself, almost as if he’s being tested in some way, as if he’s being shown the potential of his own future, from the perspective of later canon through s12). And at the beginning of 5.02, he outright declares it:

**CASTIEL** : Your plan to kill Lucifer.  
 **DEAN** : Yeah. You want to help?  
 **CASTIEL** : No. It’s foolish. It can’t be done.  
 **DEAN** : Oh. Thanks for the support.  
 **CASTIEL** : But I believe I have the solution. There is someone besides Michael strong enough to take on Lucifer. Strong enough to stop the apocalypse.  
 **SAM** : Who’s that?  
 **CASTIEL** : The one who resurrected me and put you on that airplane. The one who began everything. God.  
[SAM and DEAN look skeptical.]  
 **CASTIEL** : I’m gonna find God.

So Chuck brought Cas back because Dean (in his Dean way) had faith in Cas, but Chuck spends most of s5 trying to convince Cas that HIS faith should in return lie in DEAN, and not in Heaven or God.

(is now eagerly awaiting the s13 rendition of the themes of 5.16, 5.17, 5.18… heck the rest of s5, which were addressed specifically by Chuck in late s11, but still needs to come home to Cas personally)

So yes, I am saying that Chuck resurrected Cas that first time  _for Dean specifically_. Not only because Cas CHOSE the side of humanity in 4.22 and defied destiny because Dean asked him to help save the world, but because even after all that, Dean kept fighting, even invoking Cas’s name in defiance of the next bit of destiny the angels wanted to drag him off to… Even back then, Chuck realized that Cas had chosen his side, even if it took Cas years to understand the fact himself.

 

Original Tags:

  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * spn 5.01 
  * spn 5.02 
  * spn s5 
  * spn 7.02 
  * spn 11.20 
  * spn 12.12 
  * if you say 'mysterious ways' so help me i will kick your ass 
  * castiel winchester 
  * the scheherazade of supernatural 
  * all my tags for zachariah somehow involve the fact that dean stabbed him in the face pffft




	9. Chapter 9

[Jul 4, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/162595804980/rewatching-503-now-and-everything-is-fine)

40 notes

rewatching 5.03 now and everything is fine*

*everything is not fine

**DEAN** : What’s that?  
 **CASTIEL** : It’s oil. It’s very special. Very rare.  
 **DEAN** : Okay, so we trap Raphael with a nice vinaigrette?  
 **CASTIEL** : No.  
 **DEAN** : So this ritual of yours, when does it got to go down?  
 **CASTIEL** : Sunrise.

(mittens pauses the tv to flail about sunrises and cas)

**DEAN** : Tell me something. You keep saying we’re gonna trap this guy. Isn’t that kinda like trapping a hurricane with a butterfly net?  
 **CASTIEL** : No, it’s harder.  
 **DEAN** : Do we have any chance of surviving this?  
 **CASTIEL** : You do.  
 **DEAN** : So odds are you’re a dead man tomorrow.  
 **CASTIEL** : Yes.  
 **DEAN** : Well. Last night on earth. What are your plans?  
 **CASTIEL** : I just thought I’d sit here quietly.

(pauses again to flail about the last night on earth speech, dean’s self-proclaimed “best line”)

but also:

**DEAN** : Daddy ran away and disappeared. He didn’t happen to work for the post office, did He?  
 **RAPHAEL** : This is funny to you? You’re living in a godless universe.  
 **DEAN** : And? What, you and the other kids just decided to throw an apocalypse while He was gone?  
 **RAPHAEL** : We’re tired. We just want it to be over. We just want…paradise.  
 **DEAN** : So, what, God dies and makes you the boss and you decide you can do whatever you want?  
 **RAPHAEL** : Yes. And whatever we want, we get.

The first line there is Dean’s new private inside joke with Cas. Raphael had no reason to know about how much fun Dean had been having with Cas over that line the night before. Only Cas would understand the humor in that statement, which Raphael confirms in the next line.

And then Raphael reaffirms what the angels wanted, why they started the apocalypse in the first place. A line later reaffirmed by Gabriel, Michael, and Lucifer, and then given as the reason Raphael wanted to restart the apocalypse in s6. They tried doing it the “destined” way before 5.22, but those pesky humans refused to play their roles. Cas inadvertently plays right into Raphael’s plan to leave the humans out of it this time, and leave it all up to the angels.

Dean’s last line there sounds devastatingly familiar to what he tells Cas at the end of 6.20–   _Just because you can do what you want doesn’t mean that you get to do whatever you want!_

Raphael’s last line there is taunting the narrative, because of course he can’t get whatever he wants. Especially when what he wants is “paradise.” Because in Supernatural, invoking “paradise” is the in-text equivalent of Dean telling Sam they’re in a real funky town in 2.10 when Gordon is holding him at gunpoint in order to alert Sam to the fact that it’s a trap, or invoking the name Poughkeepsie in 9.10 and again in 9.21 as a code word to drop everything and run. “Paradise,” to anyone who’s paying attention, should set off the gut instinct Kill Bill Siren.

 

Original Tags:

  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * the scheherazade of supernatural 
  * spn 5.03 
  * spn 6.03 
  * spn 6.20
  * spn 2.10 
  * spn 9.21 
  * spn 9.10 
  * spn 5.22




	10. Chapter 10

[Jul 10, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/162825998845/im-watching-516-again-and-my-fingers-are)

28 notes

I’m watching 5.16 again, and my fingers are itching to make another post about it, but I just watched it on April 20 and made [an extensive post](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/159778327040/516-cue-horrifying-yet-somehow-disturbingly) about it then. It was in the bye week between 12.18 and 12.19, and there’s a few things that I think need to be said since then, especially post 12.22–

In my last post, I didn’t have Dean’s scene in Mary’s mind, so similar to Dean’s Heaven Memory of Mary in their old house in which we have the closest thing to Dean telling anyone he loves them, saying it to Mary when he was four. Now we have Dean saying it to her for real, as an adult, after venting his frustration and anger at her  _for real_ , telling her he hated her for what became of his childhood after her death, but telling her he still loved her anyway despite all of that.

From that extensive post linked above:

> The one thing Dean has to reclaim for himself is Mary. She’s absolutely not this warped Torture Hallucination Version that Zachariah presented him with, but she’s also not just that “Blessed Memory” version that Dean had presented himself… Nor are Sam and Dean the little boys that she thinks she remembers from her own version of Heaven. They’re just as fake as Dean’s childhood memory of Mary was in his heaven.

And… that’s pretty much 12.22.

Also in light of[ this answer from lizbob](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/162794809750/hey-lizzy-do-you-think-michael-was-a-bigger-bad) yesterday about Michael which also touched on Zachariah, this whole scene just supports that notion that Zach– as Michael’s mouthpiece and functionary– was the officially sanctioned agent of Michael’s authority:

**ZACHARIAH** : Let me tell you something. I was on the fast track once. Employee of the month, every month, forever. I would walk these halls and people would AVERT THEIR EYES! (The house rumbles and shakes.) I HAD ‘‘RESPECT’’! And then they assigned me you. Now look at me. (He chuckles unhappily.) I can’t close the deal on a couple of flannel-wearing maggots? Everybody’s laughing at me… and they’re right to do it. So! Say yes, don’t say yes; I’m still going to take it out of your asses. It’s personal now, boys, and the last person in the history of creation you want as your enemy is me. And I’ll tell you why. Lucifer may be strong, but I’m… ‘‘petty’’. I’m going to be the angel on your shoulder for the rest of eternity.

This little speech was all about HIM and that position he occupied as essentially Michael’s lackey. And he’s definitely petty.

And NONE OF THAT reflects particularly well back on his boss– Michael.

 

Original Tags: 

  * spn 5.16 
  * spn 12.22 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * all my tags for zachariah somehow involve the fact that dean stabbed him in the face pffft 
  * winchester family dynamics 
  * mary f. winchester
  * heaven hell purgatory and the empty




	11. Chapter 11

[Jul 10, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/162826864260/oh-no-no-no-no-watching-517-and-reminded-of)

44 notes

oh no…. no no no… watching 5.17, and reminded of yet another character who spoke fondly of “paradise…”

**LEAH** : Jane, Rob… It’s going to be okay. You’ll see Dylan again. When the final day comes, Judgement Day, he’ll be resurrected and you’ll be together again. We’ll all be together. With all our loved ones. We’ve been chosen. The angels have chosen us. And we will be given paradise on earth. All we have to do is follow the angels’ commandments.

and when Dean questions her doubtfully:

**DEAN** : Don’t take this the wrong way but…are you on the level?  
 **LEAH** : About what?  
 **DEAN** : About paradise.  
 **LEAH** : What about it?  
 **DEAN** : I want to know what the angels are telling you. Everything.  
 **LEAH** : Well, uh…  
 **DEAN** : You can skip the rainbows.  
 **LEAH** : There’s gonna be a prize-fight. And…it’s gonna get bad. But after we win—and we will—the planet gets handed over to the chosen. And…it’s finally peaceful. No monsters, no disease, no death. You’re just…with the people you love.  
 **DEAN** : Of course, that’s if you can get past the velvet rope. Must be nice—being chosen.  
 **LEAH** : Well, Dean…you’re chosen.  
 **DEAN** : Yeah, more like cursed.  
 **LEAH** : Must be hard. Being the Vessel of Heaven and having no hope.

and then again she tells the congregation that some people aren’t following the “angels’ commandments,” and are risking everyone’s chances of making it to that paradise. That spurs the “faithful” to go on a killing spree, murdering their friends and family who are deemed to be unworthy.

In the end, after Dean kills Leah, some of the townspeople are bewildered and lost without Leah’s guidance:

**JANE** :  But…I don’t understand. How are we supposed to get to paradise now?  
 **DEAN** : I’m sorry. Pretty sure you’re headed in a different direction.

Because Leah wasn’t taking orders from angels, she wasn’t a prophet. She was the Whore of Babylon, whispering false promises and lies in order to corrupt every soul in that town.

Thus continues my quest through canon to find ONE SINGLE INSTANCE of anyone referring to “paradise” as a GOOD thing, not inherently attached to lies and deception, not something used to manipulate people into following TERRIBLE orders…

(because no such reference actually exists, but hell if I’m not gonna keep pointing out all the reasons why “paradise” is one of the most alarming things someone can say on this show)

 

 Original Tags:

  * spn 5.17 
  * spn 12.19 
  * spn 12.23 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * monsterrrrrrrrsss




	12. Chapter 12

 

 

[Jul 10, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/162841174750/mittensmorgul-oh-no-no-no-no-watching-517)

44 notes

[mittensmorgul](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/162826864260/oh-no-no-no-no-watching-517-and-reminded-of):

 

> oh no…. no no no… watching 5.17, and reminded of yet another character who spoke fondly of “paradise…”
> 
> **LEAH** : Jane, Rob… It’s going to be okay. You’ll see Dylan again. When the final day comes, Judgement Day, he’ll be resurrected and you’ll be together again. We’ll all be together. With all our loved ones. We’ve been chosen. The angels have chosen us. And we will be given paradise on earth. All we have to do is follow the angels’ commandments.
> 
> and when Dean questions her doubtfully:
> 
> **DEAN** : Don’t take this the wrong way but…are you on the level?  
>  **LEAH** : About what?  
>  **DEAN** : About paradise.  
>  **LEAH** : What about it?  
>  **DEAN** : I want to know what the angels are telling you. Everything.  
>  **LEAH** : Well, uh…  
>  **DEAN** : You can skip the rainbows.  
>  **LEAH** : There’s gonna be a prize-fight. And…it’s gonna get bad. But after we win—and we will—the planet gets handed over to the chosen. And…it’s finally peaceful. No monsters, no disease, no death. You’re just…with the people you love.  
>  **DEAN** : Of course, that’s if you can get past the velvet rope. Must be nice—being chosen.  
>  **LEAH** : Well, Dean…you’re chosen.  
>  **DEAN** : Yeah, more like cursed.  
>  **LEAH** : Must be hard. Being the Vessel of Heaven and having no hope.
> 
> and then again she tells the congregation that some people aren’t following the “angels’ commandments,” and are risking everyone’s chances of making it to that paradise. That spurs the “faithful” to go on a killing spree, murdering their friends and family who are deemed to be unworthy.
> 
> In the end, after Dean kills Leah, some of the townspeople are bewildered and lost without Leah’s guidance:
> 
> **JANE** :  But…I don’t understand. How are we supposed to get to paradise now?  
>  **DEAN** : I’m sorry. Pretty sure you’re headed in a different direction.
> 
> Because Leah wasn’t taking orders from angels, she wasn’t a prophet. She was the Whore of Babylon, whispering false promises and lies in order to corrupt every soul in that town.
> 
> Thus continues my quest through canon to find ONE SINGLE INSTANCE of anyone referring to “paradise” as a GOOD thing, not inherently attached to lies and deception, not something used to manipulate people into following TERRIBLE orders…
> 
> (because no such reference actually exists, but hell if I’m not gonna keep pointing out all the reasons why “paradise” is one of the most alarming things someone can say on this show)

I’ve been thinking some more about this, and whether or not Leah’s influence over the town could be considered a form of “mind control.” Because that phrase is being used to describe a variety of canon situations, ranging from the very subtle (such as the effect touching the Angel Tablet in 8.17 had on Cas, influencing him just enough to make him believe his only mission was to protect the tablet from everyone, including Dean, leading to a whole host of interpersonal issues between them from abandonment to feeling untrustworthy and anger– aaah misunderstandings, or the subtle control the MoC exerted over Dean, and then the even subtler control Amara tried to exert over him), to the blatantly obvious (the direct control we saw Naomi exert over Cas and his actions between 8.07 and 8.17, the obvious 180 in Cas’s behavior and goals in 4.20 after getting sent to Heaven Boot Camp).

Leah’s control over the people of the town of Blue Earth was fairly well accomplished by the time Sam and Dean showed up, but we did get a glimpse of how quickly she was able to manipulate the entire town to her own ends. 

  * she used strategic demon attacks and gave the townspeople a false “exorcism” chant to give them evidence of her claims and proof that she knew how to protect them
  * she kept them relatively isolated, increasingly cutting off their access to the outside world as they became more convinced of her “prophecies” and more willing to follow her orders
  * at first she didn’t curb their “human” pleasures such as drinking, but eventually declared even that off limits
  * right around the time she cut off all internet and other communications in and out of the town
  * her “lists” of people who the “angels” declared unworthy of salvation and risks to everyone else’s shot at paradise grew progressively more objectionable, yet the townspeople were still willing to  _burn children alive on her orders_  in order to save their own souls…
  * she’d manipulated everyone in that town into a state of desperation in which they were entirely dependent on her next instructions, convinced she was their only hope at surviving the apocalypse
  * the townspeople, still believing she was Leah the preacher’s daughter  _attacked the preacher because she told them he was possessed by a demon_
  * she’d convinced them all that their only shot at paradise was obeying her orders and trusting in her “powers” to save them all



It’s classic Stockholm Syndrome, aka a form of “mind control.”

 

 addition from lizbobjones:

 

(And it’s kind of awful that even though John is the parent who survived into Dean’s adulthood, he has to ask Mary about him, and finds out that what the war didn’t break, her death and finding out about monsters did… Or was a final straw anyway.)

But yeah John believes in happily ever after because he’s sweet naive John, but Mary isn’t supposed to believe in it, and Dean’s doesn’t for hunters. He wishes it on Sam occasionally and Sam wishes it on him with Lisa but it wasn’t *happy* it was just being alive and not hunting. Mary has her wish granted for happily ever after by Azazel later this episode but of course that’s not a permanent thing either, and though Dean begs her not to get out of bed on the night she dies, that’s the sort of certain destiny that Cas says can’t be changed.

It’s just really sad to have these thoughts next to each other - Dean saying Mary and John are meant to be, and Mary saying that John believes in happily ever after, because that collection of thoughts just inevitably ends up inn tragedy - specifically BECAUSE they have an engineered destiny where they’re meant to be, and because Mary wishes for the happily ever after too and can’t bear John dying in their horrible world when she pins her hopes on him for marrying him and escaping from hunting. And for a moment right here in her life it seems like it might be as simple as that for her.

 

Original Tags: 

  * spn 5.17   
spn 12.19 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch




	13. Chapter 13

[Jul 18, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163142558620/mittensmorgul-now-that-im-nearly-to-the-tipping)

52 notes

[mittensmorgul](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163140602170/now-that-im-nearly-to-the-tipping-point-of-s6):

> Now that I’m nearly to the tipping point of s6 (watching 6.19 right now, the end of which is probably the biggest OH NO moment of the entire season when we’re forced to reevaluate EVERYTHING Cas has done all season with the reveal that Crowley is still alive, and that Cas has been lying to Sam and Dean all season long about something HUGE and incredibly, dangerously serious…), I’ve spotted something important to the understanding of the entire season. This is just a quick post here, not in depth analysis. I literally copy/pasted this from the chattybubbles @ lizbob:
>
>> Most of the season, the characters who know about/question Cas’s actions and plans were introduced in an antagonistic fashion (Balthazar, Atropos, Rachel…)  
> When  they challenge Cas’s plans (Rachel just called it his “dirty little secret”), WE are predisposed to side with Cas, because we have been given no reason to trust or like his accuser (and frequently have reason to doubt or dislike them)
>> 
>> And they ALL have tried to go after Sam and Dean, as well… which gives us even MORE reason to side with Cas here, since he’s typically the one who saves them…
>> 
>> but he only needs to keep saving him because the entire situation itself has been of his own making… like the harder he tries to keep them safe, the more he inadvertently brings danger upon them
>> 
>> In Dean’s eyes and therefore in the eyes of the audience since most of this season is shown to us through Dean’s pov, Cas is in the right…
>> 
>> Even while pretty much every character who learns the truth of Cas’s plans is telling him he’s in the wrong.
> 
> We aren’t given a reason to truly believe anyone who’d questioned Cas’s plans. We don’t even learn what his “dirty little secret” even IS until Cas confesses it to us in 6.20. We just know that Rachel believed he was doing something terrible. But in OUR eyes, we were already predisposed to see her as the antagonist, rather than Cas.
> 
> The moment when Crowley shows up in 6.19 is supposed to be our huge OH NO OH MY GOD CAS HAS BEEN LYING ABOUT EVERYTHING! HE ///IS/// UP TO SOMETHING BIG AND DANGEROUS!
> 
> It was the big red flag, the warning sign that viewers walk right past, because like all the warning signs the protagonist in any classical tragedy doesn’t have any reason or context to interpret correctly as a warning sign, we desperately WANT Cas to be in the right here.
> 
> Yet the text repeatedly tries to point it out to us (and to Dean) that he’s wrong… because that’s how tragedies work.

Now that I’m at the end of 6.19, here have a lil bit more:

This is the moment when Bobby begins to suspect that Cas is somehow more involved with this mess, because of Eve’s insistence that Crowley is still alive. He doesn’t trust Cas’s excuse that he somehow made a mistake when he’d burned Crowley’s bones… Sam’s the next one to admit that Cas’s story is beginning to crumble around the edges in 6.20… Dean’s the last holdout, because he’s the most emotionally invested in trusting Cas. 

Eve talks about “the natural order,” aka “cosmic consequences,” the same way Sam and the Alpha Vampire did in 12.14, as a balance.

Mary!Eve repeats Death’s warning to Dean from 6.11: “it’s about the souls.” But she goes a few steps farther in explaining it:

**EVE** : Crowley’s alive.  
 **SAM** : That’s impossible.  
 **EVE** : (scoffs) I see his face through the eyes of every child he strings up and skins. Any idea why he’s hurting my babies?  
 **DEAN** : He wants Purgatory, right? Location, location, location.  
 **EVE** : (laughs) Is that what he told you? It’s about the souls.  
 **SAM** : (scoffs) What about ‘em?  
 **EVE** : Their power, you simple little monkey. Fuel. Each soul a beautiful little nuclear reactor. Put 'em together, you have the sun. Now think what the king of hell could do with that vast, untapped oil well. How powerful he’d be. Now Crowley wants to siphon off my supply, and torture my children to do it? Okay fine. I’ll quite playing nice. I’ll turn you all. Every soul, mine. Let’s see how hot his hell burns when everyone comes to me. He asked for it.

Eve believed it was ALL on Crowley. Cas truly was his silent partner up to this point. Cas has been an equal partner in the endeavor, but his arrangement with Crowley allowed him to maintain an distance from the truth of what they were up to. It gave Cas just enough plausible deniability for him to maintain the illusion that he wanted Sam and Dean to see all season long.

Our reveal (that Dean doesn’t see) at the end of the episode is that Cas was working on this plan with Crowley all along at the end of the episode SHOULD be that moment where we put it all together…

We KNOW Eve was telling the truth here, and it’s easy enough for us to accept that Crowley (he is a demon after all, that’s a pretty demon-y thing to do…) could be involved in such a horrific power grab.

But like Balthazar, Rachel, and Atropos, Eve (especially wearing Mary’s face) is a clear antagonist. That fact makes it hard for us to believe her, despite ALL the evidence to the contrary, screaming warnings at us. Especially when we’re suddenly and shockingly informed of Cas’s collusion with Crowley on this plan. He wasn’t making an “innocent mistake.” His actions have been just as calculated and deliberate as Crowley’s all season long, and his mad scrambling to distance himself, to cover up his actions, and to keep Sam and Dean in the dark about everything is falling apart. Yet he continues to lie. He’s in far too deep to back out now. Time is running out, he’s past the Rubicon. At this point there is no other plan, and there’s too much at stake for the only plan he’s left with because of that original mistake (signing on to Crowley’s plan from the start, or to be more precise, turning away from Dean in the first place) to fail.

And here’s a perfect metaphor for the entirety of the season: Sam and Dean “rescue” two little boys, which they feel is the right thing to do. They remove these two “innocent” boys from the dangerous situation for their own good. They keep them safely out of the line of fire… but unbeknownst to them the boys were already part of the fight. Trying to keep them safe led to problems they never could’ve foreseen, and weren’t present to witness and prevent. 

They thought they were doing the right thing. They didn’t have all the information. They had no context to interpret the warning signs, and it was nearly their downfall. But 6.19 wasn’t the season finale. It was only one more warning sign along the road to the Great Big Bad Thing that was all but inevitable at this point… and really had been since the start.

 

 Original Tags:

  * spn 6.19
  * s12 hellatus rewatch
  * lies and damn lies
  * castiel winchester
  * crowley
  * monsterrrrrrrrsss
  * we don't talk about season six
  * now edited because i left the same paragraph in twice while editing and of course that's the version getting reblogged >.>




	14. Chapter 14

 

#  [(More Than) Seven Things About Supernatural: Impulse Rewatch 2017, 1x01-1x03](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163151612055/more-than-seven-things-about-supernatural)

[Jul 18, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163151612055/more-than-seven-things-about-supernatural)

52 notes

(notes from dorkilysoulless truncated to just the specific point I added commentary about)

[dorkilysoulless](https://dorkilysoulless.tumblr.com/post/163150603512/more-than-seven-things-about-supernatural):

> Me: Okay, fine I’ll do a rewatch, but I won’t blog it.
> 
> Also Me: *fucking well blogs it because there is clearly something wrong with my brainmeats* 
> 
> **1**
> 
>   1. 1x01: Random thought, but would this have been a deadly hunt for a solo Winchester?  Constance attacking Sam on the basis of his potential for future infidelity suggests that even if John was never unfaithful he’d be a potential target.  Dean’s timely intervention is what allows Sam to drive the Impala into the house, though that’s only an issue because they never have a chance to do a more traditional salt-and-burn.  I’m calling it 50/50, but am curious about what others might think. 
> 


RE: Solo Winchester would’ve died in these scenarios…

We know Dean had been hunting on his own for a while at this point. He’s probably used to hunting alone, but it seems like there’d be a necessarily different approach to hunts like these if they were a solo hunter vs part of a team.

Dean may not have handled the Bridge Situation with the feds the same way he did knowing Sam was there to back him up. He may have done more to stay below the radar of the local cops (so they wouldn’t classify him as a suspect and track him back to the motel, where he was arrested and it would’ve been case closed for him if it weren’t for Sam being on the case and calling in that fake tip).

And I still headcanon the reason the ghost was able to attack Sam was because in a way he was unfaithful to Jess, not that he cheated on her romantically, but that their entire relationship was founded on a lie. She knew nothing of his real past, about hunting, or about his premonitions/dreams about her imminent death… I think that’s where his unfaithfulness came into play. At the time, Dean had no one to be unfaithful  _to_ , at least not a romantic partner. Would he even have been ABLE to draw out the ghost alone? Or would it have ignored him entirely?

In 1.02, one of them hunting alone would likely have also approached the situation differently, but regardless, they would’ve been out on that hunting party with a bunch of civilians, and yeah… quite possibly it could’ve ended bad for all of them. But would Dean have just gone tromping off into the woods before they knew what the monster was? Or would he have researched a little bit more so he’d be sure to have the right weapon to finish the job. It’s not like the campsite gave him easy access to the Impala’s trunk, and he’d have to pack appropriately (or more appropriately than a large bag of M&M’s anyway).

Point being, I think solo hunting does make them more cautious. Like Dean in 1.11… or maybe that’s a bad example because he did still end up stuck in a Bad Situation that would’ve been fatal if Sam hadn’t eventually come to the rescue. Maybe we can blame that one at least a little on the fact that Dean was A Compromised Emotion about Sam taking off there. He was probably a little off his game.

 

Original Tags: 

  * spn 1.01 
  * spn 1.02 
  * spn 1.03 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * I'm sorry you were dragged into the unavoidable rewatch and the re-meta-ing of the inevitable rewatch :P




	15. Chapter 15

[Jul 19, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163177887205/i-survived-620-mittensmorgul-621-is-terrible)

30 notes

I survived 6.20 .

mittensmorgul  
6.21 is terrible. It’s the worst. I say that about every episode in this run of episodes, but it’s currently on, which makes it objectively worse than the rest at this moment. :P

elizabethrobertajones  
even 6x20?? :P  
naaah

mittensmorgul  
Well I at least survived 6.20 already

elizabethrobertajones  
true

mittensmorgul  
Dean’s torturing demons… self-loathing, and guilty about Lisa and Ben

elizabethrobertajones  
oh yeah because it turned out there was even more he could lose right then :P

mittensmorgul  
yeah, and Cas WASN’T in on Crowley taking them, but Dean had to believe he was…  
He didn’t know Cas was in just as an impossible spot with Crowley here

elizabethrobertajones  
he had to stop trusting Cas :(

mittensmorgul  
Yeah, there was just too much at stake  
If Cas really had “gone darkside,” Lisa and Ben’s lives were on the line, and he just couldn’t risk that  
He had no idea that Cas had already bargained with Crowley for Sam and Dean’s lives  
It’s only Balthazar who informs Cas how upset Sam and Dean are about Lisa and Ben

(i.e. WE see how screwed Cas is, how backed into a corner, but DEAN DOESN’T. To Dean’s eyes, it only looks as if Cas has been lying to him all year. And then BALTHAZAR of all people, who’s been antagonistic since the moment they met him, is so concerned about Cas’s plans that he signs up as Sam and Dean’s “double agent.” This is a guy who’s sorta dicked them around all year, treated Sam and Dean like mildly interesting pets, and yet when he learns what Cas is planning even HE is concerned enough to help Sam and Dean stop him)

mittensmorgul  
Cas boops in at JUST THE RIGHT MOMENT to save Dean when the demon escapes his trap  
Which makes him even LESS likely to trust Cas after 6.20  
“I always come when you call” wtf show have you been watching Cas?

elizabethrobertajone  
*:’(

mittensmorgul  
I hate this episode  
:P

elizabethrobertajones  
well he likes to think it’s that way and that it used to be  
just like… forget all season where he didnt’ :(

mittensmorgul  
yeah, before 6.01

After the things “Lisa” says while possessed, the things Ben has to hear his “mother” say, the look on Dean’s face when he glances to Ben before exorcising the demon knowing Lisa might not survive it… then essentially becoming John and barking orders at Ben, forcing him to do everything he swore Ben would never have to do… And then Ben won’t even look at him in the hospital, won’t talk to him.

Cas is so desperate to fix anything he can that he agrees to Dean’s request to erase him from Lisa and Ben’s memories. One episode after we saw Cas walk away from Dean raking leaves so that he could stay safe and “happy” with Ben and Lisa… which means everything Cas was trying to let Dean have, to spare him from having to sacrifice anything more to Heaven, Cas ended up taking it all away from him in the end anyway.

(god everything would’ve been so much easier if he’d just gone to dean in the first place)  
(I hate this episode)

 

Original Tags: 

  * spn 6.21 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * i am incapable of writing anything more coherent while lying on the floor trying not to cry 
  * we don't talk about season six 
  * i'm starting to think my s6 tag should be a tragedy from pretty much every perspective 
  * so have my incoherent angst-a-thon i dropped in lizbob's chat bubbles for lack of a human being in my living room to scream at




	16. Chapter 16

[Jul 19, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163179225965/622-sam-what-happened-eleanor-they-took-me-i)

36 notes

6.22:

**SAM** : What happened?  
 **ELEANOR** : They took me. I got away.  
(She opens her coat. Her shirt is soaked with blood by her stomach.)  
 **BOBBY** : Oh, Ellie. What have they done to you?  
 **ELEANOR** : (chuckles) Everything. The demon I could’ve handled, but when the angel stepped in, I - (sighs) I told him, Bobby. They have enough to crack Purgatory wide open

Ellie died moments later. After saying it was an angel torturing her that made her break. Now, we know there are other angels working for Cas and Crowley, guarding Crowley’s lab, who may have actually been responsible for the torture, but even we don’t know that for sure.

DEAN BELIEVES CAS TORTURED HER.

That information, the fact that Dean isn’t sure that it couldn’t have been Cas who tortured her, that he has to believe the worst, because in 6.20 believing the best of Cas was proven disastrously and catastrophically the wrong choice… And he just can’t take that risk with so much on the line here…

Then Cas showed up with his ultimatum, the same one he’d delivered Dean in 6.20 and 6.21, only now in a state of desperation:

**CASTIEL** : I’m sorry this had to happen. Crowley got carried away.  
 **BOBBY** : Yeah, I bet it was all Crowley you son of a bitch! (He tries to go after Castiel but Sam and Dean restrain him and he steps back.)  
 **DEAN** : (to Castiel) You don’t even see it, do you? How totally off the rails you are!  
 **CASTIEL** : Enough! I don’t care what you think. I’ve tried to make you understand. You won’t listen. So let me make this simple. Please, go home and let me stop Raphael. I won’t ask again.  
 **DEAN** : Well, good, ‘cause I think you already know the answer.  
 **CASTIEL** (shakes his head) I wish it hadn’t come to this. Well rest assured, when this is all over, I will save Sam, but only if you stand down.

Then he breaks Sam’s wall. After lying to Dean YET AGAIN, about it having been Crowley who “got carried away” with torturing Ellie, when Ellie had just told them it had been “the angel” who’d done that to her.

But how much has Cas really tried to make Dean understand? He spent almost the entire season doing everything in his power to keep Dean in the dark about everything. Yes, it was in a misguided attempt to protect Dean, but the cumulative weight of all those lies was just too much.

Sam’s journey to piecing himself back together inside his own mind is a direct mirror to what Dean’s been going through in the last three episodes regarding Cas. Since I’ve been writing over the last few days about how s6 is truly a tragedy in the classical sense, wherein the hero walks past warning sign after warning sign because they simply have no context for correctly interpreting those warnings, this really explains it well.

Sam has two lines here that Cas will eventually use in 7.17 when he eventually gets to piece himself back together… “I don’t remember anything” which eventually becomes “I remember everything. I remember you.”

I think Cas has already gone past the point of no return here. Whatever he’s been doing for the last year has changed him. Unlike how everything SINCE then has changed him for the better (as Sam assured him in 12.10), s6 definitely changed him for the worse…

**CASTIEL** : First Sam and Dean, and now this. I’m doing my best in impossible circumstances. My friends, they abandon me, plot against me. It’s difficult to understand.

He doesn’t understand WHY they “abandon and plot against him.” Because the moment they discovered how much he’d been lying to them all over the last year and a half he’s given them no reason to trust him. We know he’d also been lying to Balthazar, supposedly his closest supporter who’d Cas trusted Sam and Dean’s safety to multiple times over the year, but still Cas killed him when Balthazar tried to help Sam and Dean.

Cas had already reached that point of no return before he ever made that ultimatum to Dean. He’s already been poisoned in a way, hardened himself to do what he had to do, because he’d missed all those warning signs screaming at him to turn back all season long…

**DEAN** : You’re full of nuke. It’s not safe. So, before the eclipse ends, let’s get them souls back to where they belong.  
 **CASTIEL** : Oh no, they belong with me.  
 **DEAN** : No, Cas, it’s it-it’s scrambling your brain.  
 **CASTIEL** : No, I’m not finished yet. Raphael had many followers, and I must punish them all severely.  
 **DEAN** : Listen to me. Listen, I know there’s a lot of bad water under the bridge, but we were family once. I’d have died for you. I almost did a few times. So if that means anything to you… Please. I’ve lost Lisa, I’ve lost Ben, and now I’ve lost Sam. Don’t make me lose you too. You don’t need this kind of juice anymore, Cas. Get rid of it before it kills us all.  
 **CASTIEL** : You’re just saying that because I won. Because you’re afraid. (Behind him, Sam picks up the angel killing sword.) You’re not my family, Dean. I have no family.

Thing is, look at what Dean says he’s lost: Lisa, Ben, Sam. Why has he lost each of them? AS A DIRECT RESULT OF CAS. But Cas can neither understand that, nor is it something he can let himself care about while it’s all happening. He has to keep focused on the bigger picture if he has any hope of winning against Raphael, and also against Crowley now.

And this entire mess is ALL down to Cas’s initial choice. What he’s been through, essentially alone for the last year and a half, hardening himself into a single-minded focus, taking the entire responsibility for everything onto his own shoulders as ally after ally has abandoned and “betrayed” him (Rachel, Balthazar, and now Dean… granted NONE of them actually betrayed him, they just were so appalled on learning his plan to defeat Raphael that  they could no longer support him, but that’s as good as betrayal in his purpose-driven, ends-justify-the-means mindset).

And yet still Dean tells him that everything’s not lost, that it’s not too late to turn the bus around, to save himself. Dean was offering him a hand, despite having lost everything because of Cas’s actions over the last year… he still hasn’t given up on Cas.

But of course it’s too late. It’s always been too late. Because that’s the definition of a tragedy.

 

Original Tags: 

  * spn 6.22 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * we don't talk about season six 
  * a tragedy from pretty much every perspective




	17. Chapter 17

[Jul 19, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163180579655/701-just-a-quick-lil-bit-here-because-i-have)

35 notes

7.01:

Just a quick lil bit here, because I have honestly suffered enough today.

**DEATH** : Shut up, Dean. I’m not here to tie your shoes every time you trip. I warned you about those souls how long ago? Long enough to stop that fool. And here we are again, with your little planet on the edge of immolation.  
 **DEAN** : Well, I’m sorry. All right? I’ve been trying to save this planet, so maybe you should find somebody better to tip off.  
 **DEATH** : Maybe I should spend my effort on a better planet. Well, it’s been amusing.  
 **SAM** : Wait, h-hold on, hold on. Just – can you give us something? You – you have to care a little bit about what happens to us.  
 **DEATH** : You know, I really don’t. But I do find that little angel arrogant.  
 **DEAN** : Great. Let’s go with that.  
 **DEATH** : Your only hope is to have him return it all to Purgatory. Quickly.  
 **SAM** : We need a door.  
 **DEATH** : You have everything you need at that lab. Get him to return there and compel him to give up the power.  
 **DEAN** : Compel?  
 **DEATH** : Figure it out.  
 **BOBBY** : But that door only opens in the eclipse, and that’s over.  
 **DEATH** : I’ll make another. 3:59 Sunday morning, just before dawn. Be punctual. Don’t thank me. Clean up your mess. Try to bind me again, you’ll die before you start. Nice pickle chips, by the way.

I truly believe that Death intended for Cas to walk himself through that portal, just as Sam had thrown himself into the cage. They’re nearly identical situations, no?

Cas tried to return the souls, but the leviathans had already long-since taken control. From the moment he let them out, it was already too late. There was no “sending them back.” There was only throwing himself into purgatory with them inside… but like Sam possessed by Lucifer, Cas wasn’t in control.

**DEAN** : Yeah, and it turns out that you’re about the same open book as you’ve always been. Hallucinations? Really? I got to find out from Death?  
 **SAM** : What was I supposed to do?  
 **DEAN** : How about not lie? How about tell me that you’ve got crazy crap climbing those walls?  
 **SAM** : Why? You can’t help. You got a lot of pretty severe crap swinging your way lately, and – and I thought –what? I thought why burst the one good bubble you had left? It’s under control.  
 **DEAN** : What? What, exactly, is under control?  
 **SAM** : I know what’s real and what’s not.

Oh, hon. No you really don’t… but also, trying to protect Dean by LYING to him? You mean, that thing that Cas had been doing for over a year? That thing that led to all the “severe crap” Dean is trying to deal with? And not bursting the one good bubble he had left? Which was Cas’s reason for lying to him FOR CLOSE TO TWO YEARS?! THAT ENDED UP WITH THE LEVIATHAN WALKING THE EARTH AND CAS– THE BEST FRIEND DEAN HAS EVER HAD– TRANSFORMED INTO SOMETHING DEAN DOESN’T EVEN RECOGNIZE?! AND SAM THOUGHT LYING TO DEAN AFTER ALL OF THIS WAS THE RIGHT CHOICE HERE?

**CASTIEL** : No. I feel regret, about you and what I did to Sam.  
 **DEAN** : Yeah, well, you should.  
 **CASTIEL** : If there was time, if I was strong enough, I’d – I’d fix him now. I just wanted to make amends before I die.  
 **DEAN** : Okay.  
 **CASTIEL** : Is it working?  
 **DEAN** : Does it make you feel better?  
 **CASTIEL** : No. You?  
 **DEAN** : Not a bit.

And then Cas’s last words to Dean before the portal opens are, “I’m sorry, Dean.”

When he’s brought back to life, everything he says before the Leviathan take over is contrition, acknowledgement that he was wrong, admission of shame, and a promise that he will redeem himself to Dean.

And then it’s too late, and Cas is gone. Again. And it’s pretty much what breaks Dean.

 

Original Tags:

  * spn 7.01 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * i would've labeled s7 'dick jokes' but okay 
  * we don't talk about season six 
  * because this is really the final episode of that run of A plot 
  * or maybe the opening scene of 7.02




	18. Chapter 18

#  [(More Than) Seven Things About Supernatural: 1x04-1x06](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163196820205/more-than-seven-things-about-supernatural)

[Jul 19, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163196820205/more-than-seven-things-about-supernatural)

32 notes

(truncated dorkilysoulless' original post to only include the points I commented on)

[dorkilysoulless](https://dorkilysoulless.tumblr.com/post/163191395427/more-than-seven-things-about-supernatural):

> Three eps when I’ve got to be somewhere else for 9 hours is…an adventure.  Note to self: schedule a five ep binge day in the near future.
> 
> **1x04**
> 
>   1. 1x04: So this whole first plotline really does establish Sam as someone who loses at sleep when there is Something Very Wrong With Him™.  The visions/nightmares arc we’re in now?  Sleep is hard.  It eases off when he’s on demon blood during the Apocalypse stuff (with the exception of sneaking out at night to meet up with Ruby), but then he’s back to sleeplessness when he’s soulless, and then again with Hallucifer. I’d say to give the boy a gatorade, a blanket, and a cardboard box to hide in, but that’s not going to help. 
>   2. 1x04: Sam, let your brother be proud of his EMF reader.  It’s impressive, damn it.  Not all of us got a fucking scholarship to goddamn Stanford.
>   3. 1x04: Dean’s fear of flying is one of the best things.  It’s also one of the many moments in S1 where Dean “I’m supposed to be a cool badass” Winchester is not, in fact, a cool badass.  He is Han Solo at the console trying to make small talk about how Nope, There Is Nothing Wrong Here, doomed to spend an uncomfortable amount of time in the garbage compactor.  
> 


re: 1.04: One of my favorite things in the entire series is how Dean’s homemade EMF meter was introduced to Sam’s mocking of it… and yet they’re still using the same one (or at least one built pretty much the same way) 12 years later. They never felt the need for any sort of fancier model, because it works. Because Dean knows what the hell he’s doing and built a quality thing that does what it’s supposed to do.

re: 1.06: Agreed, when you combine points 2 and 5. If nothing else, the fact that Sam never told Jess about any of this (which had surprised Becky), Becky’s reaction probably served as a painful realization that he could’ve told Jess, maybe should’ve told her, dredging up yet more guilt that he wasn’t able to prevent her death (which he was also still feeling guilty about… he brought the supernatural into her life, after all, but without warning her about the risks, because he felt he was out and safe with her).

Bleh. S1 does have some weird bits to it, like they were still sort of wandering around blindfolded trying to feel out where the story would eventually go, trying to keep as many options open as possible. I try not to get too hung up on the odds and ends that just seem randomly weird like that.

 

Original Tags: 

  * spn 1.04 
  * spn 1.05 
  * spn 1.06 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * practicalities of monster hunting
  * supernatural weapons 
  * yeah the emf meter is a weapon. or at least a tool against ghosties so...




	19. Chapter 19

[Jul 20, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163214841705/im-on-s5-of-my-hiatus-re-watch-and-i-just-watched)

37 notes

**[ltleflrt](http://ltleflrt.tumblr.com/) asked: I'm on s5 of my hiatus re-watch and I just watched the episode where Jo and Ellen die. And the scene where Jo is telling them she's going to die and she'll stay behind to stop the hellhounds is almost the same as the s12 episode where Cas was dying from the stab wound. Their stomach wounds were in the same place. A mother knelt next to her left side while the boys stood above her. And Dean was in love with Jo and Cas in both scenarios. Dean never got to kiss Cas tho :(**

Yeah. OH gosh. I think the comparison was deliberate, because there were a lot of callbacks to 5.10 in 12.12. They were both about Crowley providing them rather key information about magical weapons (the Colt, the Lance of Michael). In fact the bit about the Colt… Crowley returned it to them in 5.10 (after having “stolen” it from them in or having it stolen from them back in s3, and then he promptly stole it back again to give to Ramiel), and a Winchester stole it back in 12.12.

I mean, 5.10 was called Abandon All Hope, and we nearly got to that point in 12.12. Cas didn’t get a kiss, or even really the equivalent of a kiss (an answer to his “I love you.”) He came just about as close to dying as it was possible to do without actually dying… And the fact he  _didn’t_  die was a neat subversion.

Now post 12.23, there’s still unsettled things between Dean and Cas, but now I think Dean’s gonna have at least a few episodes to focus on his regrets. Jo also had a chance to choose for herself to make that sacrifice, and at the time it was for a good cause, would help them keep fighting… even if it turned out that their weapon was ineffective against Lucifer and they wouldn’t win that particular fight. At least they WON the fight against Ramiel.

 Original Tags:

  * spn 5.10 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * spn 12.12 
  * destiel 
  * the scheherazade of supernatural 
  * spn 12.23 
  * ltleflrt




	20. Chapter 20

[Jul 20, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163215436435/ugh-702-again-i-typed-out-my-thoughts-to)

14 notes

ugh. 7.02. Again, I typed out my thoughts to lizbob as I was trying to do other things, so this is kinda bare-bones. I am so far behind today I’ll never get caught up, so I’m just leaving myself notes on stuff I want to expand on later, time permitting… Needless to say, Damn Ben Edlund.

Bobby tells Dean (after the sure, you’re fiiiine talk) that he’ll be where he always is– right here– if Dean changes his mind and wants to talk about it. And they’re both relieved about that.

**BOBBY** : Yeah, I’m – I’m worried too, but humor me for a second. How are you.  
 **DEAN** : Who cares? Don’t you think our mailbox is a little full right now? I’m fine.  
 **BOBBY** : Right. And weren’t you pissed at him when he said the same thing just a couple hours before he spilled his marbles all over the floor?  
 **DEAN** : Yeah, well. [Pours himself a cup of coffee.] I’m not Sam, okay? I keep my marbles in a lead friggin’ box. I’m fine. Really.  
 **BOBBY** : Of course. Yeah. You just lost one of the best friends you ever had, your brother’s in the bell jar, and Purgatory’s most wanted are surfing the sewer lines, but yeah, yeah, I get it. You’re – you’re fine.  
 **DEAN** : Good.  
 **BOBBY** : Course, if at any time you want to decide that’s utter horse crap, well I’ll be where I always am. Right here.  
 **DEAN** : What, you want to do couples’ yoga, or you want to get back to hunting the big bads?  
 **BOBBY** : Shut up. Idjit.

elizabethrobertajones  
yeah, season 7 is the woooorst  
there’s that little moment in 7x02 where they seem to have a sort of settled comfy life  
I hate it more than anything :P  
like, “last drinks at bobby’s”

[I was prepared to go on and on about how this was Bobby and Dean feeling relieved that they still had not only each other to lean on, but also “right here,” i.e. Bobby’s house, a place of relatively safety and calm… and how in a season determined to strip everything good away from Dean it’s such horrible foreshadowing, taunting the narrative]

mittensmorgul  
Yeah, despite everything Bobby listed off there, he was like, at least it’s still you and me, kid. We’ll figure it out.  
D:

mittensmorgul [re: Jody]  
DOCTOR MONSTERFACE.

elizabethrobertajones  
this is how you get a spin off

mittensmorgul  
this, plus 5 more years of this, plus fandom yelling. :P

[…]

mittensmorgul  
I’m in the middle of two Edlund episodes, this one and 5.10 (answering a message about it) I’m overdosing on Edlund

elizabethrobertajones  
Ooooh dear

mittensmorgul  
Dean telling Sam how to tell the difference between reality and hallucination because Dean knows torture. It’s actually a really terrifying slant on how much Dean really understands about torture…  
not just dishing it out or taking it, but understanding the psychology of it

elizabethrobertajones  
yeah… and how much he doesn’t let on normally

mittensmorgul  
dammit, Dean steps away from Sam at Bobby’s burnt out house, and calls Bobby… not worried, but like Bobby assured him he’d always be “right here” if Dean needed him, Dean proves he DOES need him with : “You cannot be in that crater back there. I can’t… If you’re gone, I swear, I am going to strap my Beautiful Mind brother into the car and I’m gonna drive us off the pier. You asked me how I was doing? Well, not good! Now you said you’d be here. Where are you?

That is proof of the assumption earlier, that moment of understanding and comfort in Bobby and Dean’s conversation I quoted above. They’d essentially grounded themselves in what they still had left, a reminder that all was not lost, they still had something (stone one, as Dean later tells Sam when he talks him out of his hallucination with the press to the wound on Sam’s hand). But then it looks as if even “stone one” is gone by the end of the episode.

s7 is just so painful like this…

 

 Original Tags:

  * actual quote i just used elsewhere: Damn Ben Edlund 
  * spn 7.02 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch
  * seriously though why doesn't everyone just trust dean's gut instincts it's like he's got an uncanny magical gift here... 
  * and that's largely what makes him such a good lie detector...
  * even without adding in the whole torture thing
  * find the thing mittens 
  * i intend to write something more about Dean and the psychology of torture and how it's tied to his ability to read people 
  * and as a powerfully empathetic person
  * how getting up off the rack and picking up the knife WAS a form of torture 
  * probably the MOST effective form of torture for dean because of this




	21. Chapter 21

[Jul 20, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163215785315/dorkilysoulless-mittensmorgul-reblogged-your)

38 notes

 

(based on the post from Chapter 18)

[dorkilysoulless](https://dorkilysoulless.tumblr.com/post/163209860012/mittensmorgul-reblogged-your-post-and-addedre):

> [mittensmorgul](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/) reblogged your post and added:
>
>> re: 1.04: One of my favorite things in the entire series is how Dean’s homemade EMF meter was introduced to Sam’s mocking of it… and yet they’re still using the same one (or at least one built pretty much the same way) 12 years later. They never felt the need for any sort of fancier model, because it works. Because Dean knows what the hell he’s doing and built a quality thing that does what it’s supposed to do.
> 
> EXACTLY.  And it’s funny/sad the way Dean internalizes some of Sam’s attitude about him after a while, because we’re in S1 where Dean is confident and building impressive tools and  _literally tells Sam in 1x07 that “you don’t need to graduate from college to be a genius_  only to descend later on into “I’m just a grunt” and…not necessarily hiding his smarts, but only bringing them out occasionally.    
>   
> It makes me wonder a little bit about whether/how much Dean experienced gaslighting growing up.  As someone who did, I still find that the weirdest things can flip a switch in my head about what’s real about me/the things around me. 
>
>> re: 1.06: Agreed, when you combine points 2 and 5. If nothing else, the fact that Sam never told Jess about any of this (which had surprised Becky), Becky’s reaction probably served as a painful realization that he could’ve told Jess, maybe should’ve told her, dredging up yet more guilt that he wasn’t able to prevent her death (which he was also still feeling guilty about… he brought the supernatural into her life, after all, but without warning her about the risks, because he felt he was out and safe with her).
> 
> Thanks, Mittens.  I didn’t need this heart.  *sobs quietly into his coffee*
>
>> Bleh. S1 does have some weird bits to it, like they were still sort of wandering around blindfolded trying to feel out where the story would eventually go, trying to keep as many options open as possible. I try not to get too hung up on the odds and ends that just seem randomly weird like that.
> 
> Oh gods yes.  It’s one of those things that makes my inclination to interrogate the text from inside the text super frustrating during S1.  Because hey, it’s not a fully-formed  _anything_ yet.  There are a dozen little mysteries that are very cool in their own container that look very odd taken with the whole. 
> 
> I mean, knowing this will probably never stop me poking them with a stick, but…

oh no, I have no doubt about the gaslighting. I mean, the show’s given us evidence for it over and over again. I know there’s a long meta waiting to be written on the subject, but I’m shockingly unprepared to suffer through the research on that one at the moment when my brain’s already plotting out Dean vs torture long meta. It’s just too much… :P

 

 Original Tags:

  * spn 1.04
  * spn 1.06 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * oh DEAN




	22. Chapter 22

[Jul 20, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163216163300/spn-703-theres-a-shift-toward-the-wilderness)

27 notes

spn 7.03: there’s a shift toward the wilderness here, like the Winchesters are getting shoved out past even the decaying fringes of civilization– such as Bobby’s house and junkyard– and right out into the forest. Just one more way s7 takes things away from them.

They don’t have Bobby’s anymore, but they still have Rufus’s cabin in Whitefish. They’re more isolated than ever. They don’t have motels while they’re on the road, they mostly have abandoned buildings to squat in.

Even the Gas N Sip Sam (and then Dean) visits in 7.03 is rustic, like a woodsy cabin. And in contrast to Sam and Dean getting shoved further and further into the woods, away from society, it’s probably one of the last non-conforming Gas N Sip outlets we see before the Leviathan start taking them over. Before they all started becoming indistinguishable from one another– right down to the employees in their lil blue vests– like Biggersons restaurants do.

It’s like they were giving Sam and Dean a taste of that Purgatory Aesthetic all season long, like they were in some sort of Purgatory-On-Earth, and it’s the Purgatory Monsters that drove them there. So much of s7 is just topsy-turvy like this, and I can appreciate that, as painful as it is.

 

Original Tags:

  * spn 7.03 
  * purgatory 
  * heaven hell purgatory and the empty 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * gas n sip




	23. Chapter 23

[Jul 20, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163219154505/704-disclaimer-i-watched-this-episode-with-one)

13 notes

7.04 (disclaimer: I watched this episode with one eyeball and about 30% of my brain due to Unforeseen Adulting, but I have at least one (1) thought about it)

Guilt. I just made [this reply about Sam and guilt](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163216553660/i-dont-think-sam-telling-jess-about-hunting-would)* a short while ago, and then I get thrown into an episode all about Dean’s personal guilt.

Dean’s put on trial by Osiris to weight the guilt he feels in his own heart. This isn’t about whether others forgive him for the things he feels guilt about, but the fact that he can’t forgive HIMSELF for these things. They weigh on him, making his heart heavy, because he can’t let them go.

This feels relevant to me today because I was already[ thinking about Jo in 5.10](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163214841705/im-on-s5-of-my-hiatus-re-watch-and-i-just-watched)** this morning (first thing I saw this morning before coffee, and it’s kinda stuck with me…), and here’s the ghost of Jo dredging up an old bit of guilt Dean’s still clinging to that really goes right back to s2.

Dean clings to his guilt with both hands, because it’s just about the only thing he’s got, and s7 is doing an excellent job of reminding him of that over and over again.

After Jo, Sam takes the stand in Dean’s defense, but Dean is SUPER FRESHLY FEELING NEW GUILT over Sam after killing Amy at the end of the previous episode. He’s lying about it, hiding that from Sam, despite Sam’s defense of him here, and even something that begins to look a little like acceptance, if not forgiveness on Dean’s part. 

But Dean’s still keeping that secret from Sam, and whoa does that spread the guilt on thicker…

Dean knows exactly who that third witness is going to be– Amy– and rather than confront that, rather than break Sam’s faith in him, Dean capitulates and accepts his judgment. He already knows he’s doomed.

He’s doing the one thing he can do, which is to protect Sam from the truth coming out. It’s a bit self-preservational as well. He doesn’t want Sam to know this horrible thing he did, that he clearly regrets already…

**DEAN** : I got a question. So where the hell did that come from, volunteering to defend me?  
 **SAM** : He was gonna kick me out.  
[…]  
 **SAM** : So, who was he talking about?  
 **DEAN** : Who?  
 **SAM** : That whole final witness thing.  
 **DEAN** : No idea. Honestly, that could be just about anybody dead we know. By the way… I mean, I get why Judge Judy put me on trial – I got guilt coming out of my pores. But… why’d he skip you?  
 **SAM** : I think I just don’t… feel guilty anymore.  
 **DEAN** : Come on.  
 **SAM** : Look, I don’t know what to tell you, Dean. I mean, I’ve spent a lot of time feeling pretty crappy – like, my whole life.  
 **DEAN** : What, you got a secret stash of happy pills?  
 **SAM** : Hell. Look, I’m not saying it’s logical. I just… you know, I feel like I did a lot of stuff I should have felt bad for, and then I paid a lot of dues and came out the other side, you know?  
 **DEAN** : And that worked? I mean, you really feel like your – your slate’s wiped?  
 **SAM** : No. Nothing ever gets wiped. You know? Sometimes I see Lucifer when I friggin’ brush my teeth, but, I don’t know, I guess I just finally feel like… my past is my past, and I can move on with my life. You know, hopefully.

Sam IS starting to feel less guilty. Learning that so much of the stuff you’d always felt guilty about had been strategically forced upon you by the powers of Heaven and Hell as part of some divine prophecy makes it a little easier to let go of some of that guilt, you know? He’s obviously still got some issues to work through, which will come up again during the Hell Trials in s8, but Sam is better at putting these things in perspective than Dean is.

One last thing, the thing CONSPICUOUSLY ABSENT from the list of Dean’s guilt: Cas. Because strangely, the fact that the LOSS of Cas weighs terribly on him throughout s7, it’s not due to GUILT. Dean doesn’t feel guilty about Cas and his actions in s6. He feels betrayed. And that’s key here.

 

 Original Tags:

  * spn 7.04 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * just for the Dean Feels Guilty About Everything stuff 
  * sam sympathizes and dean empathizes 
  * we don't talk about season six



*

Jul 20, 2017

17 notes

**[rionaofblue](http://rionaofblue.tumblr.com/) asked: I don't think Sam telling Jess about hunting would have saved her. I mean, Mary was an experienced hunter, yet she had no way of defending herself against Azazel. Granted, Mary was trying to play housewife, so she probably was a little less prepared than she could have been, but if Jess did know about the truth, how she was supposed to defend herself on top of going to college and trying to act normal among friends? Jess was also a target, unlike Mary, so....Sam shouldn't feel guilty at all.**

Yeah, WE know that, but back in s1? Sam didn’t know any of that.

I think 12.12 proved that Mary could’ve had devil’s traps built into every inch of her house, and Azazel still would’ve walked right through the door. She really didn’t have the tools to protect herself from him. He was something she’d never seen before, nor heard of. Anything short of having the Colt under her pillow (heh) wouldn’t have helped that night. And she had no way to even know that.

And Sam had NO WAY of knowing this huge prophecy he was at the center of, how Heaven and Hell had conspired long before he was born to set up the Apocalypse and put him and Dean at the very center of the cosmic gameboard. How all of this had literally been following him his entire life, and that getting out of hunting wasn’t enough to just make it all go away.

I don’t think his guilt was solely based on the assumption that telling Jess the truth could’ve saved her, but at least partly based on the assumption that if he hadn’t brought his crap to her doorstep in the first place that Jess would still be alive.

He’d lived his whole life with an irrational low-level guilt that Mary had died in his nursery, that something had been there  _for him_ , that he’d always felt unclean, like a freak. And then Jess died  _in the exact same manner that Mary did_ , and the thing that had killed her in Sam’s nursery when he was a baby also killed Jess above their bed… I mean, how is he NOT supposed to feel guilty about that?

Even though over the course of the rest of the series he does finally learn the truth and begin to forgive himself. By 12.04, with his talk with Magda, we finally get to see the degree to which he’s forgiven himself.

Original Tags:

 

  * spn 1.01 
  * spn 12.04 
  * spn12.12 
  * mary f. winchester 
  * sam fucking winchester 
  * kajuned



**

Jul 20, 2017

37 notes

**[ltleflrt](http://ltleflrt.tumblr.com/) asked: I'm on s5 of my hiatus re-watch and I just watched the episode where Jo and Ellen die. And the scene where Jo is telling them she's going to die and she'll stay behind to stop the hellhounds is almost the same as the s12 episode where Cas was dying from the stab wound. Their stomach wounds were in the same place. A mother knelt next to her left side while the boys stood above her. And Dean was in love with Jo and Cas in both scenarios. Dean never got to kiss Cas tho :(**

Yeah. OH gosh. I think the comparison was deliberate, because there were a lot of callbacks to 5.10 in 12.12. They were both about Crowley providing them rather key information about magical weapons (the Colt, the Lance of Michael). In fact the bit about the Colt… Crowley returned it to them in 5.10 (after having “stolen” it from them in or having it stolen from them back in s3, and then he promptly stole it back again to give to Ramiel), and a Winchester stole it back in 12.12.

I mean, 5.10 was called Abandon All Hope, and we nearly got to that point in 12.12. Cas didn’t get a kiss, or even really the equivalent of a kiss (an answer to his “I love you.”) He came just about as close to dying as it was possible to do without actually dying… And the fact he  _didn’t_  die was a neat subversion.

Now post 12.23, there’s still unsettled things between Dean and Cas, but now I think Dean’s gonna have at least a few episodes to focus on his regrets. Jo also had a chance to choose for herself to make that sacrifice, and at the time it was for a good cause, would help them keep fighting… even if it turned out that their weapon was ineffective against Lucifer and they wouldn’t win that particular fight. At least they WON the fight against Ramiel.

 

Original Tags:

  * spn 5.10 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * spn 12.12 
  * destiel 
  * the scheherazade of supernatural 
  * spn 12.23 
  * ltleflrt




	24. Chapter 24

Jul 20, 2017

8 notes

7.05: Miscommunication is the main theme of the episode here, with a rather pointed application of infidelity (i.e. lying to and deceiving loved ones).

Dean had been the deceive-ee for most of s6, so in s7 it seems like turnabout is fair play. My 7.03 and 7.04 posts dealt with Dean’s sense of guilt, so I’ll just skip right to the end of 7.05 to underscore this theme before it all gets torn down and laid bare in 7.06 tomorrow morning… (Slash Fiction, indeed, maybe more like Slash And Burn Fiction amirite?)

**SAM** : You notice how they, uh, you know, how they – how they opened up, got everything off their chest?  
 **DEAN** : Yeah. Kudos on selling them that crap.  
 **SAM** : It wasn’t crap, Dean. It worked.  
 **DEAN** : Sam, I am so very, very, very, very…very, very tired –  
 **SAM** : Dean, like it or not, the stuff you don’t talk about doesn’t just go away. It builds up, like whatever’s eating at you right now.  
 **DEAN** : There’s always something eating at me. That’s who I am. Something happens, I feel responsible, all right? The Lindbergh baby – that’s on me. Unemployment – my bad.  
 **SAM** : That’s not what I’m talking about.  
 **DEAN** : Well, then what the hell are you talking about?  
 **SAM** : I’m talking about whatever you’re not telling me about. Look, Dean, it’s fine. You can unload. That’s kind of what I’m here for.  
DEAN just looks at SAM.  
 **SAM** : I mean… we’re good, right?  
 **DEAN** : We’re good.  
DEAN gets into the car. SAM stands for a moment looking somewhat hurt and frustrated. They drive away.

Hooboy, just lump ALL THE GUILT on there, Deano. D:

 

Original Tags:

  * spn 7.05 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch




	25. Chapter 25

[Jul 20, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163220976115/okay-one-more-thing-about-707-and-guilt-seeing-as)

14 notes

okay one more thing about 7.07 and guilt seeing as how his guilt over Jo has just come back to the surface in 7.04. Almost as if Jo’s ghost being brought back also summoned Ellen’s ghost to reinforce this message about Dean’s guilt:

SAM walks away. The MUSEUM GUIDE grabs DEAN’s arm.  
 **MUSEUM GUIDE** : I’m sorry, I don’t normally do this during business hours, but do you know an Eleanor… or an Ellen? She seems quite concerned about you. She wants to tell you – pardon me – if you don’t tell someone how bad it really is, she’ll kick your ass from beyond. You have to trust someone again eventually.

Tags:

  * spn 7.07 
  * just for the Dean Feels Guilty About Everything stuff 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch




	26. Chapter 26

[Jul 21, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163253888035/rewatching-slash-fiction-right-now-so-many-epic)

8 notes

**Anonymous asked: Rewatching Slash Fiction right now. So many epic moments!**

I know, right? I woke up late to Mr. Mittens already watching it. Too bad they already showed 7.07 yesterday and are skipping right to 7.08 next… I just needed to roll my eyes in the general direction of TNT again over this.

(this is Robbie Thompson’s first episode, too)

If you’re still watching 7.08, just remember, they hashed out their issues to the extent they ever do on this show in 7.07.

I mean, Sam lied about the Hell-O-Vision and nearly shot Dean just a few episodes ago, but Dean lies about Amy to protect Sam (and yeah, we all know he was wrong to kill her, and even HE knows he was wrong to kill her, but depression and trauma and all that, just like Sam’s suffering with his broken wall but without the obvious excuse to pin his less-than-stellar choices about lying on), but they’re setting up all their issues that will completely come to the surface by the end of the season– Dean went to purgatory and Sam hit a dog…

But yeah, Robbie Thompson’s first episode. :P

Original Tags:

 

  * spn 7.07 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * sam sympathizes and dean empathizes 
  * Anonymous
  * robbie thompson is a treasure 
  * the tnt loop showed these out of order today




	27. Chapter 27

[Jul 21, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163256667900/709-this-is-the-point-of-s7-where-i-have-to-ask)

34 notes

7.09– this is the point of s7 where I have to ask myself every two minutes why I love s7 so much, because everything is objectively terrible, but at the same time so objectively wonderful… (oh right this is Edlund. That explains everything.)

Ranger Rick

Brandon the Obnoxious Waiter

Glampers (and after Sam went camping in the previous episode, presumably in the traditional non-glamping fashion, I love that they get all judgmental on the idea of glamping in this episode)

Dean being a genius, getting the electricity going in the house they’re squatting in (at least until Bobby goes and taunts the narrative about staying off the grid:

**BOBBY** : How many big mouths are out there, running card traces, like Chet, or hunting us down God knows what ways? No, now’s not the time to be laying our bed rolls out on the grid. Not if we can help it. )\

Poor Ranger Rick, Dean liked that guy.

Meanwhile, Dean really is beginning to see the bigger picture here, knowing now how everything that leads up to the end of s11, God and the Darkness finally reunited, slowly working their way back to the start of everything ever and fixing all the problems ever…

**DEAN** : That’s just great. This is stupid. Our quality of life is crap. We got Purgatory’s least wanted everywhere, and we’re on our third “The World’s Screwed” issue in, what, three years? We’ve steered the bus away from the cliff twice already.  
 **SAM** : Someone’s got to do it.  
 **DEAN** : What if the bus wants to go over the cliff?  
 **SAM** : You think the world wants to end?  
 **DEAN** : I think that if we didn’t take its belt and all its pens away each year that, yeah, the whole enchilada woulda offed itself already.  
 **BOBBY** : Stop trying to wrestle with the big picture, son. You’re gonna hurt your head.

It just takes a few more loops through that cycle before they get to that point and the original narrative begins turning itself inside out in s12.

(pause to admire that they took a sandwich made of a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey and wrapped it up in tin foil shaped like a freaking swan… just throwing one more fake bird into the mix)

The absolute WORST thing here, though, is that Dean FINALLY gets his first reprieve under the effect of the TDK Slammer goo from all that guilt, the betrayal, the loss…

**BOBBY** : There’s something wrong with you, Dean.  
 **DEAN** : Are you kidding? I’m fine! I – I actually feel great. The best I’ve felt in a couple months. Cas? Black goo? I don’t even care anymore. And you know what’s even better? I don’t care that I don’t care. I just want my damn slammer back.

All the drinking he’d been doing, all that he’d been trying to shove down what had happened to Cas– how betrayed he still feels– the alcohol and other distractions just weren’t enough to make him  _forget_  that he was still suffering over all of that. But suddenly it feels entirely unimportant to him under the influence of the TDK Slammer.

**SAM** : Good. So you don’t worry about him?  
 **BOBBY** : What do you mean? Before the Turducken?  
 **SAM** : Yeah. Yeah, I kind of mean more like, uh… more like ever since my head broke… and we lost Cas. I mean, you ever feel like he’s – he’s going through the same motions but he’s not the same Dean, you know?  
 **BOBBY** : How could he be?  
 **SAM** : Right, yeah, but what if –  
 **BOBBY** : What if what, Sam? You know, you worry about him. All he does is worry about you. Who’s left to live their own life here? The two of you – aren’t you full up just playing Snuffleupagus with the Devil all the live long?

And yeah, they finally hit the nail on the head. 

But the best thing about s7 is that in the middle of all of this, there’s the inevitable completely unironic lines like “Dick is coming.” And a TV headline that reads “THE RISE OF DICK.”

And heck, they spend all season talking about how invincible, intelligent, and adaptable the Leviathans are, but they never seem to get their own dick joke…

Oh no, okay… let’s watch Dick take yet one more anchor away from the Winchesters…

Original Tags:

  * spn 7.09 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * actual quote i just used elsewhere: Damn Ben Edlund




	28. Chapter 28

[Jul 21, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163258533780/710-i-know-weve-taken-this-episode-apart-piece)

8 notes

7.10: I know we’ve taken this episode apart piece by piece before, but I am suffering about a few things in particular today:

Bobby as Sam and Dean’s parent, as one of the last anchors they have while the Leviathan are tearing up every other solid thing they have in their lives, and his struggle to stay in their lives at all costs, even sacrificing his own chance at heaven. He not only claims Sam and Dean as his own, but he has to face the worst memory of his entire life– killing his own abusive father– in order to win out against his reaper.

He has to accept that he WASN’T a “bad kid” himself, even for trying to save himself from what his father was. It puts so much of Bobby’s talks with Dean over the years into perspective, how he’d once told Dean that he was a better man than his father ever was… it gives us a whole new context to understand just how much Bobby truly got what Dean was going through in relation to his own “deadbeat dad” issues.

We also see Dean FINALLY crack, finally let out some of the anger he’s been feeling all season long, even if it’s misdirected at a hospital employee and an innocent pane of glass. He also gets to deliver his threat directly to Dick Roman for the first time, and just like Zachariah laughed at him back in s5 when Dean said he’d stab him in the face, Dick finds Dean amusing…

**DEAN** : We’re coming for you, and not just to hurt you – to kill you. You understand me?  
 **DICK ROMAN** : Come on, Dean. I can’t be killed.  
 **DEAN** : You’re gonna wish you could, then.  
 **DICK ROMAN** : [laughs] That’s some conviction. You’d really crush it on the motivational circuit.  
 **DEAN** : You’re either laughing because you’re scared or you’re laughing because you’re stupid. I’ll see you soon, Dick.

Dick will learn that Dean always makes good on his promises…

One last horrible thing: We know Sam is using the wound on his hand to keep himself tethered to reality. He presses on it when he’s struggling with his hallucinations of Lucifer:

**SAM** : Dean, listen – we need to brace ourselves.  
 **DEAN** : Why?  
 **SAM** : Because it’s real.  
 **DEAN** : What do you want to do? You want to hug and – and say we made it through it when Dad died? We’ve been through enough.

Sam is struggling to remember what’s real at all, and all season he’s been dealing with this in a very literal way, and now Dean’s refusing to accept the reality that Bobby might not make it… and the fact that Dean is actively fighting to REJECT this particular bit of reality while Sam’s struggling to accept reality in general… right after that conversation quote above Dean storms off, but Sam sits down and squeezes his hand. Is he actively seeing Lucifer in that moment? Is Lucifer tormenting him directly about Bobby dying? Or is Sam struggling to accept the reality of his situation entirely, the reality that Dean is still so determined to fight against. Gah. Okay. I’m suffering enough. moving on to 7.11

 

 Original Tags:

  * spn 7.10 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch




	29. Chapter 29

[Jul 21, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163262116130/711-sam-gets-the-call-from-krissy-chambers-and)

6 notes

7.11: Sam gets the call from Krissy Chambers and wants to go make sure she’s okay. Dean’s so preoccupied about the numbers Bobby left him with his dying breath, even THREE WEEKS LATER, that he’s practically gone single-minded obsessive over solving the mystery.

Sam suggests they call Bobby hunting associates to let them know he died, but Dean says he has no intention of calling anyone, but that Sam should feel free to if he feels the need, which Sam reacts to in the same way Dean did. He had no intention of calling people about it either. So it’s interesting that he was trying to nudge Dean into making those calls. >.>

Interestingly Dean spends half the episode with Frank, who he’d once introduced himself to by namedropping Bobby only to have a gun pulled on him, while Sam spends that time with first Krissy and then her father, who namedropping Bobby actually has a comforting effect despite the strained circumstances of their meeting. :P

But poor Dean, he does get a little bit of a reminder that there are still other people out in the world who have their own problems, and Krissy pulling a gun on him serves as a temporary kick in the pants to remind himself of that fact. His own problems (which are also partly the entire world’s problems yet again) don’t invalidate the very real problems Krissy is experiencing, that she’d called Bobby for help with. It might not be End Of The World level problems, but for her– a teenager who’d alredy lost her mother– it was End of HER World kind of problems.

* * *

Gah, I forgot I was typing this up, got distracted by Real Life™ again, and whoopsie 3 hours later forgot where I was going with this… So I’m posting it in hopes I remember eventually… >.>

I think it had something to do with the fact that Sam had been pressuring Dean to take care of things that he himself had no intention of ever doing. He’d made it out as if Dean SHOULD be doing those things, that they were the RIGHT things to be doing. 

I guess the most important thing to take away from this episode is that Sam and Dean are not only losing so much of their support network, they’re also inheriting a huge burden of responsibility in addition to their own problems, and the whole Dick thing…

 

 Original Tags:

  * spn 7.11 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * i know i started writing this with an actual point in mind
  * sam sympathizes and dean empathizes




	30. Chapter 30

 [(More Than) Seven Things About Supernatural: 1x07-1x09](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163332599155/more-than-seven-things-about-supernatural)

 [Jul 23, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163332599155/more-than-seven-things-about-supernatural)

23 notes

(again, excerpted to only include the points I commented on)

[dorkilysoulless](https://dorkilysoulless.tumblr.com/post/163324203222/more-than-seven-things-about-supernatural):

 

> Did you know that the simple act of waking up at 4 AM can make it easy to catch a few eps before you have to do other things?  
> 
> MAGIC.  
> 
> **1x09**
> 
> 3\. Is it weird to have a favorite visual continuity error?  Because the fridge safety strap being on then off then on then off is one of my favorites.
> 
> Also, that poltergeist is Gavrilo Princip of the Great Lamp War.  It tried killing Sam with a lamp and now?  CHAOS.

re: 1.09 point 3: I love that stupid continuity error too, and they could’ve avoided it. I mean, the entire error is “intentional,” like they knew it was going to look like an “error.” Because legally they couldn’t lock the fridge closed while there was actively a human child trapped inside. But what they could’ve done was… remove the child from the fridge for the scenes where it was locked shut. I mean, easy peasy solution. Not like you could actively SEE the child in there while the door was shut. But I think legal came back with the ruling that they couldn’t even imply there was a child trapped inside, outside of the scene where we are shown the ghost initially “locking” the door shut.

Bleh, I also find it ridiculous and wonky, primarily because it was something the entire crew was overtly aware of and sensitive too, and yet the visual continuity error persisted nonetheless. :P

ALSO YES TO THE GAVRILO  PRINCIP LAMP. The first shot in the Winchesters’ unending Lamp Hostilities Exchange. But the lamp was being used and manipulated by the poltergeist in that house. He was just a tool of a larger conspiracy, but of course that initial Lamp Aggression was still the match that lit the fuse on 12 years of hostilities. :P

Original Tags: 

  * spn 1.07 
  * spn 1.08 
  * spn 1.09 
  * this is a lamp abuse awareness blog 
  * whyyyyy do i have so many lamp related tags? 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * and yes lamp-related crack is just one of many reasons that hellatus rewatches are so delightful to me




	31. Chapter 31

[Jul 24, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163368710370/712-dont-mind-me-im-just-being-sad-about-jody)

12 notes

7.12: Don’t mind me I’m just being sad about Jody and Sam sharing the bottle of Blue that Rufus lost to Bobby in 11.16… so much time travel. :P

Dean getting more terrible coping advice from Eliot Ness to go with Frank’s awful “keep smiling, be professional” advice from the last episode.

Meanwhile Dean’s having the Worst Year… (well at least until that year he decides to take on the MoC and then becomes a demon) (or maybe until the year the Darkness has a crush on him and tries to end the whole universe)

(or maybe until RIGHT NOW when he’d had just a few moments to think he might have just managed to win the fight for everything he ever wanted– Cas, his Mom alive– and then lost it all in the span of 30 seconds…)

But at least he didn’t get stuck in 1944. And I feel like I just wrote a huge great lot on this episode just a few months ago during the s12 meta rewatch, and hey I did! So I’m shutting up here for now and just enjoying it :P

Original Tags:

  * spn 7.12 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * spn 12.23




	32. Chapter 32

[Jul 25, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163410644910/i-find-joyce-bicklebee-quite-amusing-lol)

21 notes

**Anonymous asked: I find Joyce Bicklebee quite amusing LOL!**

I find her the PERFECT exemplar of the Leviathan, actually. 

(yes I am watching 7.16 too… *waves hi across the TNT loop*)

Well, some combination of her and George. They were going for “Evil Corporate Monsters” in s7, and that really comes across here. Joyce is the Evil Ambitious Micromanager trying to advance her own career on the back of her employees, and George is the more-competent-than-he-gets-credit for grunt worker who just isn’t properly appreciated.

**JOYCE** : We have a chain of command here, George. You see a Winchester, you don’t eat him. You tell me, and  _I_  eat him. What do you think, I’m gonna tell Dick, “I think he ate him, but I didn’t see it”? What, I’m supposed to vouch for  _you,_  George? Like you’re not one dumb move away from a bibbing already? Come on. 

and

**JOYCE** : Sam and Dean. It is such a pleasure to make your acquaintances. Now, just so you can put names to the faces that’ll be eating you, I’m Joyce, and this is my assistant, George. 

But George had been playing his own game, trying to make a deal with Sam and Dean, helping them kill Joyce, telling them about the Leviathan’s “Big Picture Plans,” and tells them they’re building a research facility to “cure cancer.” But he does live… (or at least we don’t see him die…)

(meanwhile Sam is cracking up, Dean has to fight the urge to Prince Sigfried himself into oblivion, and Frank is telling Dean that when you dig down deep it’s all Dick… a big old giant nesting doll of Dick… and right at the end Sam and Dean lose another anchor–however paranoid and whackadoo– in their lives… Frank.)

I find it really interesting, aside from the Joyce and George dynamic, that Sam describes what’s happening inside his head as “Lucifer” doing these things to him.

**SAM** : Yeah, well, every time I close my eyes, Lucifer is yelling into my head. It’s like I let him in once, now I can’t get rid of him.

and

**SAM** : It doesn’t matter what I do, Dean. Lucifer will not shut up.  
 **DEAN** : Even now?  
 **SAM** He’s singing “Stairway to Heaven” right now.  
 **DEAN** Good song.  
 **SAM** Not 50 times in a row.

I mean… that’s Sam’s own mind generating “Lucifer” as his tormentor. It’s not  _actually_  Lucifer. It’s the damaged part of his soul that remembers Hell taking over.

And then we go right into 7.17, where that damaged part of his soul takes over to the point where it’s actively killing him. The Lucifer hallucination even points this out to him:

**HALLUCIFER** : I’m just sayin’… back when you had no soul you never had to sleep.

and then Sam confirms it to Dean when Dean suggests there could be a cure out there:

**SAM** : When you put my soul back…  
 **DEAN** : No.  
 **SAM** : …Cas warned you about all the crap it would –  
 **DEAN** : Screw Cas! Quit being Dalai frickin’ Yoda about this, okay? Get pissed!  
 **SAM** : [sighs] I’m too tired. This is what happens when you throw a soul into Lucifer’s dog bowl. And you think there’s just gonna be some cure out there?

The hunter who calls Dean back, after he follows Bobby’s clue, essentially reports his meeting with Emmanuel in a way very reminiscent of Dean’s first meeting of Cas in 4.01–

**MACKEY** : Heard the best way to get to him is through his wife, Daphne, out in Colorado? So, I go. Tell her I’m going blind. It’s true. My right eye’s burnt out. She says, “Go home. He’ll come.” So, I go. I set every trap, every test in the book.  
 **DEAN** : That’s what I would have done.  
 **MACKEY** : Emmanuel shows. He passes every one. There ain’t nothing weird about this guy. Except… he’s the real deal.  
 **DEAN** : What do you mean?  
 **MACKEY** : He touched me, and my eye was fixed. Look – I don’t believe in much that don’t suck your blood. But I wouldn’t call you on a maybe.

And oh gosh there’s quite a few narrative and visual callbacks to 4.01 in this episode– Dean peering out the window of the closed convenience store, talking with the demon on Emmanuel’s porch in a way that recalls talking with the demon waitress in the diner in 4.01, even Meg showing up as a “helpful” demon to parallel Ruby– and it’s even DEAN who vouches for her to Cas, telling him she’s a “friend.” I know there’s more, but I keep getting distracted watching it instead of keeping track of them…

And then when Cas does finally remember everything, the crushing guilt he hadn’t been able to remember from 7.01 finally returns:

**CASTIEL** : What I did. What I became. Why didn’t you tell me?  
 **DEAN** : Because Sam is dying in there.  
 **CASTIEL** : Because of me. Everything. All these people. I shouldn’t be here.

And suddenly, everything Dean just couldn’t find it in himself to forgive Cas for, that he’d confessed to Emmanuel that he just couldn’t let go, suddenly when it’s CAS again none of that matters. But it’s now CAS that can’t forgive himself, who believed he DESERVED TO DIE for what he’d done.

**DEAN** : If you remember, then you know you did the best you could at the time.  
 **CASTIEL** : Don’t defend me. Do you have any idea the death toll in Heaven? On Earth?

And it’s Dean who offers him redemption, giving him his coat back and telling him that they can still fix it. Sadly, in his depressed state, he feels like the only thing he can fix is Sam, but it’s a start.

Taking on the damage to Sam’s soul, healing Sam, also becomes penance for Cas as he suffers through that damage himself. And still it’s less punishment than he thinks he deserves (since he’d intended to stay in Purgatory as well… and really everything he’s done since then, everything he’s done trying to do the right thing in the last five years, has been an extension of this moment… whether by direct result, guilt, or as the consequences of his self-sacrificing attempts to fix everything, or at least to do one right thing… to make one right choice)

This… sorta got away from me.

 

Original Tags: 

  * spn 7.16
  * spn 7.17 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * i... kinda went off on about 9 tangents here... oops... :P 
  * Anonymous



*unrelated to this post, accidentally copy/pasted with it from the previous post on my blog, is this glorious tag that just feels like good advice: 

[sometimes we just need to stop and smell the unicorn farts](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/sometimes-we-just-need-to-stop-and-smell-the-unicorn-farts)

 


	33. Chapter 33

[Jul 25, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163412879275/aah-718-weve-been-garthed-i-was-replying-to)

14 notes

Aah, 7.18… We’ve been Garthed. I was replying to other stuff and keeping up notes in the chat to Lizbob, so have that:

mittensmorgul: I’m being Garthed now :D

elizabethrobertajones:   
poor old Cas  
oh that makes up for everything

mittensmorgul:   
not really but I’ll take it

elizabethrobertajones:   
yeah :P It’s the kooky Garth episode meant to cheer everyone up  
like hey things aren’t ALL bad  
there’s still Garth in the world  
I wonder how the crack episodes affect the Winchesters psychologically  
probably half the reason for all their masks  
they could just angst it all out but no they have to deal with a killer bunny mask today

mittensmorgul:   
This is where Dean’s alcoholism starts to turn around though… he’s the only sober one at the end of the episode :P

elizabethrobertajones:  
yeah

mittensmorgul:   
Oh, Mr. Fizzles

elizabethrobertajones  
although he sobered up worryingly fast :P

mittensmorgul  
He got Cas back. I mean, he at least knows where Cas IS now, even if it’s not a great situation… it’s better than what he’d had  
And he let go of his season-long hurt over what Cas had done

elizabethrobertajones  
yeah

mittensmorgul  
He went from telling Emmanuel that he didn’t know why he couldn’t forgive Cas, to basically telling Cas he was forgiven, and telling him that they could fix everything  
That’s a HUGE burden off his soul, you know?

elizabethrobertajones  
yeah… he was still kinda personally upset until 7x23

mittensmorgul  
yeah, but this was one major part of that upset that had at least turned the bend and gone from “hopeless” to “at least we have a chance now”

elizabethrobertajones  
yeah

mittensmorgul  
and in s7, that’s more than he had all year, when he’d had everything systematically taken away from him

elizabethrobertajones  
yeah  
I think he WANTED to make it right with Cas and you could see that in 7x17 but in 7x21 when Cas is… unhelpful… it really frustrates him

mittensmorgul  
Plus, he got Sam back too, perfectly healthy, no more soul damage, which brought him a sense of personal forgiveness for having stuffed that damaged soul back into Sam in the first place

* * *

S7 had been dismantling every last good thing in Dean’s life, 7.17 and Cas’s return, as well as Sam’s insta-recovery from everything that had been plaguing him from the moment he dove into the pit in 5.22, it was a HUGE turning point for everything…

And then we have cheerful, nothing-really-gets-him-down Garth show up with a sock puppet and a laughable alcohol tolerance, and by the end of the episode Dean’s at least sincerely suspicious that a lot of the good things that have come back to him– like the sword shoved into his hand while fighting the shojo– have been the direct result of Bobby’s ghost.

And then we begin to SEE Bobby’s ghost, helping them in 7.19.

Season 7 finally finds some momentum for the Winchesters’ upswing… things begin looking up…

 

Original tags: 

  * spn 7.18 
  * spn 7.19 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch




	34. Chapter 34

[Jul 26, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163455681670/801-regarding-my-last-loooong-post-about-the-end)

6 notes

8.01: Regarding my last [LOOOONG post about the end of s7](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163454512675/survival-of-the-fittest-rewatch-airs-today-i-have)(*, I’d like to point out that Dean was applying this exact same sort of advice to Kevin at the end of 8.01:

**Sam:** Kevin? How you holding up?  
 **Kevin:**  Awesome. The king of Hell just snapped my girlfriend’s neck. How about you?  
 **Dean:** All right, listen to me. I’m sorry about your girlfriend, okay? I am. But the sooner you get this, the better. You’re in it now, whether you like it or not. That means you do what you got to do. I’m hitting the head.

It’s pretty much the only advice he’s got, but for now it’s got to be enough to do the job, to keep everyone alive, because honestly that’s all he’s got left  _at all_.

 

Original tags: 

  * spn 8.01 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch



*

Jul 26, 2017

145 notes

**Anonymous asked: Survival of the Fittest rewatch airs today. I have still never forgiven Sera Gamble for putting the words in Dean's mouth that no one cares that Cas is broken. :) I don't care how frustrated Dean was, no wonder Cas doubts where he stands with the Winchesters. I always imagine Cas remembers all of the times Dean made those comments like being called junkless sissy. This is not really a serious complaint, just sharing an observation that Ritchie was right, "Words hurt, Winchester." :) :)**

Ooh, if we’re bringing Richie the Incompetent Hunter from 3.04 into things, let’s remember the context in which we’re quoting, because that’s key here:

**RICHIE** : Oh, man. You should have seen the rack on this broad. Freakin’ tragedy when I had to gank her.  
 **DEAN** : Whoa, whoa. Wait. Who killed her? If I remember, your ass was toast until I showed up.  
 **RICHIE** : Oh, I forgot what a comedian this guy was.  
 **DEAN** : Richie, Richie, know what? I told you then and I’ll tell you again — you’re not cut out for this job. You’re gonna get yourself killed.  
(RICHIE’s phone rings)  
 **RICHIE** : (to caller) : Talk to me.  
(to DEAN): FYI, Winchester — words hurt.   
(to caller): Yeah? (pause) No, it’s not a good time, babe. Later.  
 **DEAN** : So you find anything in this town, anyway?  
 **RICHIE** : Ah, no. I got nothing. Oh, wait a minute. You mean as in demons and whatnot?  
 **DEAN** : Yeah.  
 **RICHIE** : No, I got nothing.

There’s the quote in context. We’ve just met Richie, completely distracted by his “sister,” who is clearly a hooker, in a town that’s supposedly overrun with demons that he was theoretically hunting. His first story up there makes us wonder if he’d really had things under control on that previous hunt, but combined with his comment about the physical distraction the succubus provided and the fact that he also has NOTHING on the demons in town but is distracted so easily with the, uh… local entertainment… and the serious way Dean delivered his line about him not being cut out for this job, AND the fact that Dean was right and he DID end up getting himself killed… well… 

There’s also the joking bantering way he delivered that line to Dean about words hurting while he was talking on the phone with yet another woman he was hooking up with… I mean… Dean wasn’t trying to be hurtful, and Richie wasn’t actually hurt by his words. He was trying to be honest. Richie didn’t take his advice, and Dean ended up having to bury him. So take the quote in context.

Just like the quote about 7.23:

**CASTIEL** : I can’t help. You understand? I can’t. I destroyed… everything, and I will destroy everything again. Can we please just leave it at that?  
 **DEAN** : No. [He gets up.] No, we can’t.  
 **SAM** : Dean…  
 **DEAN** : We can’t leave it. You let these friggin’ things in. So you don’t get to make a sandwich. You don’t get a damned cat. Nobody cares that you’re broken, Cas. Clean up your mess!

Out of context, it sounds awful. But look back at ALL of s7 (and really most of s6 too). What’s the advice that Dean himself got from Frank, and from Bobby, and from Eliot freaking Ness, and pretty much everyone else all season long?

That his personal problems aren’t as important as getting the job done. Paste on a smile and decide to keep doing the job or just give it up. That there was no time for wallowing in his own depression:

**Eliot:**  Boo hoo, cry me a river, ya nancy! Tell me, are all hunters as soft as you in the future?

AND AS AWFUL AS IT WAS, IT KEPT HIM GOING UNTIL THINGS STARTED TO TURN HIS WAY AGAIN.

This… wasn’t a one-off pissy comment from Dean to Cas. Because why had Dean needed to suffer through pretty much everything he did in s7 until Cas came back? Bobby laid it out in 7.02:

**Bobby** : Course. You just lost one of the best friends you ever had, your brother’s in the bell jar, and purgatory’s most wanted are surfing the sewer lines, but you know, yeah, I get it. You’re fine.

But what was the DIRECT CAUSE of all of this? Cas’s actions in s6. This is why he had such a hard time forgiving Cas at first (which he talked about with Emmanuel in 7.17, before he actually DID extend the olive branch and essentially INSTANTLY forgave Cas for EVERYTHING). But as long as Cas was alive, and there, they could fix things. There was still hope that everything could be made right again.

In 7.21 when Cas first woke up, Dean let himself hope (despite Meg’s warning that he wasn’t quite the same) that Cas would progressively “get better,” because no matter how bad things sometimes got, Cas was still his friend, and still someone he relied on, put his faith in, because Cas had always come back to him… I mean, in the “Playing Sorry” scene, the nature of the board game and the moves they make essentially define the dynamic Dean’s struggling with here.

Dean plays first, and starts talking with Cas, but Cas refuses to engage with his questions at all. Instead he talks about something else entirely at the same time playing the game and knocking Dean’s piece back to the start. But Dean knows that Cas has information that can help begin to put this entire mess to rights. They literally have a tablet in their hands that may hold all the answers, and Cas is ALIVE and AWAKE, and he remembers EVERYTHING… and yet he doesn’t even seem to care ABOUT DEAN AT ALL. One of the things Cas can’t engage with due to his sense of abject guilt over IS DEAN. And what he did to Dean at the end of s6 and in 7.01. In his present state, Cas can’t see any way through to redeeming himself to Dean (which was ALL he wanted in 7.01 before the Leviathans took over).

But all season long, Dean’s been fighting mostly alone (or at least that’s how it felt to him) to try and clean up this mess that he’d tried to stop Cas from making in the first place. And goddammit, take ALL of that, Dean’s frustration from s6 and his desperation and loss throughout s7, mix it in a huge pot and serve it up when he’s so close to the finish line of saving the entire planet, knowing Cas holds the final key to taking Dick down… 

And he knows that CAS knows this. Dean’s spent three episodes trying to be understanding, trying to coddle Cas along, hoping HIS Cas that he knows is still in there somewhere, the one whose dying promise in 7.01 had been to redeem himself to Dean, the one who remembered everything and saved Sam in 7.17, the one Dean told they COULD fix it all if they worked together, the one who cares about humanity so much he stood alone against Heaven to save it.

The one Hester accused DEAN of having broken in the first place in 7.21:

**DEAN** : Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back off. We’re actually trying to clean up one of your angel’s messes! You know that.  
 **CASTIEL** : He’s right. An angel brought the Leviathan back into this world, and – and they begged him. They begged him not to do it.  
 **DEAN** : Look, just give us some time, okay? We will take care of your Prophet.  
 **HESTER** : Why should we give you anything… After everything you have taken from us? The very touch of you corrupts. When Castiel first laid a hand on you in Hell, he was lost! For that, you’re going to pay.  
HESTER walks towards DEAN.  
 **CASTIEL** : Please. They’re the ones we were put here to protect.  
 **HESTER** : No, Castiel.  
HESTER backhands CASTIEL and he falls to the ground. INAIS and the other MALE ANGEL each hold up two fingers to stop DEAN and SAM from going to CASTIEL’s aid.  
 **HESTER** : No more madness! [She punches CASTIEL.] No more promises! [She punches CASTIEL again.] No more new Gods! [She punches CASTIEL repeatedly and then holds up an angel knife.]

SHE DIRECTLY BLAMES CAS’S FRIENDSHIP WITH DEAN FOR EVERYTHING. “The very touch of you corrupts.”

Meanwhile, Cas is unable to even talk about his own actions in the first person. He’s doing everything he can to distance himself from his guilt. It’s the only way he’s able to engage with everything he’s feeling guilty about. And now Dean’s just got one more item on his checklist of things to feel like shit about– ruining an angel of the Lord– and not even through his actions or words or deeds, but  _by the simple fact of his existence_. He’s poison.

Yet… he’s still fighting. He’s still swinging, until he just can’t anymore. And some combination of desperation over all of this, after a season where he seriously contemplated just giving up so many times, where he cared so little about himself or the fight or just… anything… Cas’s current state is just the last straw.

Look at what Dean tells Kevin in 7.21 about being “chosen”:

**DEAN** : Oh, I don’t know, man. What can I say? You’ve been chosen. And it sucks. Believe me. There’s no use asking “why me?” ‘Cause the angels – they don’t care. I think maybe they just don’t have the equipment to care. Seems like when they try, it just… breaks them apart. 

THAT line always breaks my heart. Because it’s ABOUT CAS. And Dean’s guilt over what’s happened to Cas. HE feels like it’s entirely his fault that Cas is broken apart now.

Cas had done all of this to protect Dean. ALL of it. Including sacrificing himself to heal Sam in 7.17, which directly resulted in his current state.

And back to 7.23, Cas drops the bombshell on them that the entire garrison of angels is dead or in hiding– including the ones who’d been guarding Kevin Tran– and then veers off topic to talk about monkeys because he doesn’t want to get involved, he doesn’t want to fight, and he certainly doesn’t want to feel his personal guilt for yet another loss (of both the angels from his garrison AND the prophet).

This is also the first time that Dean tells Cas they don’t want him to fight, they’re just worried, and they need the information he has about Kevin in order to try and save him:

**CASTIEL** : I don’t want to fight.  
 **DEAN** : No, I’m not – [very calmly] we’re worried.  
 **CASTIEL** : They took him. He’s alive. I felt such responsibility, but it’s in your hands now.  
 **DEAN** : Wait. Hold on a freakin’ minute.  
 **CASTIEL** : I feel much better.

It’s in your hands now. As if that just absolved him of all that responsibility.

And that’s… just not how any of this works.

Plus, after what Crowley said:

**CROWLEY** : Certainly. Oh, bonus. Meg, I’m gonna scoop you up, take you home, and roast you till you’re jerky. [CASTIEL starts to move towards  **CROWLEY**.] But not… yet. Cas can have you for now. Hilariously, it seems he’d be upset at losing you. And the boys need Cas to get Dick. Don’t they, Cas?  
 **CASTIEL** : Oh, I – I don’t fight anymore.  
 **CROWLEY** : Come on. Given the particulars of your enemy, sadly, you’re vital.

CAS IS VITAL. They’d can’t get Dick without him. And from Cas’s reaction to Crowley’s assertion there? Cas knows it. He goes so far to avoid that truth as to make the Solidarity Sandwiches in order to dodge his responsibility AGAIN. Because again, he can’t look them in the eyes when he says it:

**SAM** : And Cas, why was Crowley so certain that you need to come with us?  
 **CASTIEL** : Crowley’s wrong. I’ll be waiting right here. But please – accept this sandwich as a gesture of solidarity.

When Sam and Dean show up at Sucrocorp the first time, they discover there are MULTIPLE Leviathans who ALL look like Dick. Their weapon only works once, so they can’t afford to bone the WRONG Dick, and they understand. Cas is the only one who can tell them which is the Real Dick. This is why they need Cas. And CAS KNOWS THIS. Yet he deflects AGAIN.

But WHY is he deflecting? Because just like Dean, who’s believed he was “poison,” and has been reminded of it very recently, Cas believes the same of HIMSELF. This is right in Dean’s personal wheelhouse. DEAN GETS IT. But he’s really got a limited set of tools in his personal emotional tool box for coping with that feeling he knows so well… 

This is also where they finally catch up with Bobby, and finally burn the flask keeping his ghost tethered to the planet, and Cas stands in the shadows witnessing Sam and Dean’s loss (that he also feels responsible for) of the closest thing to a father they had. He begins to realize that Dean and he are of a similar mind here…

**CASTIEL** : I’m not good luck, Dean.  
 **DEAN** : Yeah, but you know what? Bottom of the ninth, and you’re the only guy left on the bench… Sorry, but I’d rather have you, cursed or not. And anyway, nut up, all right? We’re all cursed. I seem like good luck to you? [CASTIEL stares at DEAN.] What?  
 **CASTIEL** : Well, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but I detect a note of forgiveness.  
 **DEAN** : Yeah, well, I’m probably gonna die tomorrow, so…  
 **CASTIEL** : Well, I’ll go with you. And I’ll do my best.

And despite Cas still not being able to forgive HIMSELF, he sees that Dean can’t really forgive himself either… yet they’re both able to forgive each other. It’s a start.

This story isn’t about just one or the other of them. It’s about BOTH of them, feeling the same weight of guilt and failure and loss. It doesn’t work unless you see that from both sides, in context of the gravity of the entire story, and what circumstance has taken from BOTH of them.

Which is why they BOTH ended up in Purgatory.

It’s not Dean “being mean” to Cas. And that one comment that Cas completely understood in context– he KNEW he was actively dodging his responsibility. Which is why I feel really uncomfortable labeling this incarnation of Cas “crazy.” Because he’s not. He’s in abject denial, but he isn’t crazy. The moment they land in Purgatory, he makes sure Dean knows what’s happened and where they are, and then takes off running to keep the Leviathans away from Dean. Perfectly lucid, perfectly aware, and doing the only penance he has left to him– protecting Dean by sacrificing himself.

Which is honestly how we got into this whole mess in the first place. It’s not DEAN’s words that drove him to this point. It’s just what angels DO.

Remember, Cas has been a warrior of Heaven for billions of years, reprogrammed at need to follow orders. His entire existence had been nothing but THIS. His notion of “family” in Heaven was an understanding that he had a purpose and a job and a place because of what he DID, not just because of who he WAS. It’s not even something Cas could truly understand yet– what family means to humans as opposed to what it means to angels.

Cas judged his personal worth on how useful he could be, not on the fact that he was someone Dean just cared about REGARDLESS of how useful he could be to them. Sure, in this case Cas was instrumental in fixing things, but no matter how many times Dean has told him he’s family, that they work better together, Cas still doesn’t have a human frame of reference to understand what that means. He will soon enough… *waves at s9 in the distance*

And wow, okay, I just spent nearly 4 hours on this. Wow. But this is important, this is everything, because this right here is the absolute Stone Number One in the foundation of ALL of Dean and Cas’s future relationship. This guilt on BOTH sides, for very different reasons. This feeling that they’re both poison. That they corrupt everything they touch… THIS pushed BOTH of them to find forgiveness in themselves through finding forgiveness in each other. I mean… without this there would BE NO DESTIEL. I mean… that’s the big picture here.

 

 Original tags:

  * spn 7.17 
  * spn 7.21 
  * spn 7.23 
  * spn s7 
  * castiel winchester 
  * oh DEAN 
  * the scheherazade of supernatural 
  * just one of MANY reasons i was perplexed by folks who were angry that s8 didn't give us canon destiel despite ALLLLLLL the subtext hinting at SOMETHING happening between them 
  * there was still ALLLLL this baggage^^ to work through for BOTH of them 
  * baggage that they're STILL working through individually 
  * that Dean's nearly come to the end of on his side but that Cas is still fighting through on his side
  * THIS IS WHAT IS STILL BEING RESOLVED BETWEEN THEM THROUGHOUT S12 
  * s12 as s6 redux 
  * which is a tag i eventually expanded to include s7 because this was it really-- the genesis of bringing ALL of this out of the subtext
  * and without this baseline point where they started WE WOULDN'T BE WHERE WE ARE TODAY 
  * literally ALL of Cas's emotional growth since this point has rested on this singular fact which is why I get so ANGRY about folks laying all this blame on DEAN like this 
  * because it erases the narrative push that even makes a potential future relationship between them possible AT ALL 
  * Anonymous 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch




	35. Chapter 35

 

[Jul 27, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163491121675/wow-i-have-such-a-kink-for-82-im-cutting-work)

34 notes

**Anonymous asked: Wow, I have such a kink for 8.2! I'm cutting work to watch this again LOL!**

Oh dear! Confession time, I was up until like 4 am (no that’s a lie, it was almost 5 am), and woke up to find Mr. Mittens watching it. It was the bit I’m currently watching right now, at the riverbank in Purgatory.

“Let me bottom line it for you. I’m not leaving here without you. Understand?”

In my groggy state, I blurted out, “Oh gosh, we’ve come so far since then.” And then I ran to the living room and turned on the other tv, rewound it to the beginning and watched the whole thing again.

I still get skeeved by this entire auction. Like they deliberately invited Crowley and a representative of Heaven to drive up the price of the tablet. I mean, who else would have any interest at all in the Demon tablet? It’s like Plutus just… stole stuff and held it for ransom under the guise of this freaky auction. I mean, god of greed, so it seems logical, but >.>

Another bit that’s always bugged me is not the line itself, but the fandom misinterpretation of it as a Canon Fact:

Linda Tran offers her own soul in trade for the tablet and Kevin, which Plutus accepts with this reasoning:

**CROWLEY** : If it’s souls that you’re after, I can give you a million souls.  
 **DEAN** : Hey, flyboy, are you gonna get in on this?  
 **SAMANDIRIEL** : We guard the souls in Heaven. We don’t horse-trade them.  
 **CROWLEY** : So we have a deal.  
 **PLUTUS** : It’s not about the quantity, chief. It’s about the sacrifice. This little lady’s soul is the most valuable thing she has. It’s everything. Are you willing to offer everything, Mr. Crowley?  
 **DEAN** : Tick-tock.  
 **CROWLEY** : Fine. You win. I bid… my own soul!  
 **PLUTUS** : [laughs] Mr. Crowley, you don’t have a soul. [to MRS TRAN] Congrats, sweetheart.

The key here is that Linda’s soul was valuable because it was the largest SACRIFICE she was capable of making. Like Plutus said, “It’s everything.” So Crowley’s offer of a million souls, which after s6 we know would’ve been a major power trade (he loaned Cas 50k souls to smack down Raphael, but it still wasn’t enough to defeat Raphael– hence the grab for Purgatory souls. So a MILLION souls was a significant and substantial quantity of power to give up). But in Hell, new souls are showing up every day. They’re a renewable resource. Short-term it would’ve been a high price to pay, but long-term? In the bigger picture? Meh.

But in that same vein, when Plutus points this out, he asks if Crowley is willing to offer EVERYTHING he owns, and Crowley takes that to mean his own soul… but that’s hardly everything Crowley owns that is of value, you know?

First off, he really doesn’t HAVE a soul. Demons ARE souls. The smoky thing we see is what Hell does to that bright and shiny human soul we’ve seen before numerous times. I don’t think Plutus was saying that Crowley really had no soul, but that he didn’t have one to TRADE, because it was his entire BEING, you know? And it’s certainly not the extent of the things Crowley COULD sacrifice– like the entire realm of Hell.

Plus, that matter of the fact that the “Mr Crowley, you don’t have a soul” line was a direct quote of something someone once said to the real-life Aleister Crowley. (a fact that is now impossible to google because of the millions of results it returns about this scene…).

**SAM** : Dean, were you really going to, uh…  
 **DEAN** : What? Slit soccer mom’s throat? Yeah, I was. I wish I had.  
 **SAM** : Dean –  
 **DEAN** : It was Crowley, Sam. No matter what meat suit he’s in, I should have knifed him. I mean, yeah, it would have sucked, and I would have hated myself, but what’s one more nightmare, right?

And Dean’s takeaway after Kevin runs for it? That people he doesn’t “need” anymore tend to die.

Which gives a HELL of a lot of weight to the statement in Purgatory to Cas:

**DEAN** : We’ll figure it out. Cas, buddy, I need you.

But Cas still ended up stuck in Purgatory anyway. As if Dean’s “need” for him wasn’t even enough to save Cas from that fate. And then months later in 8.17:

**Dean:**  This isn’t you. Cas, I know you’re in there. I know you can hear me. Cas, it’s me. We’re family. We need you; I need you.

And… it WAS enough to “save” Cas that time, but still not enough to get him to stick around. Heck, so much of s8 was about need…

I mean, while I was typing this up, I let 8.03 run in the background.

We already know from the jump in s8 that Dean’s pissed off that Sam walked away for an entire year, leaving Kevin running and fighting for his life alone. It came up again in 8.02, with Kevin still not really trusting Sam and Dean, and running off on his own again (with Linda this time).

And in 8.03, Dean finds yet another thing to harp on Sam about his own year off:

**DEAN** : All right, man, look, I get it. You took a year off to do yoga and play the lute, whatever, but I’m back. Okay, we’re back, which means that we walk and kill monsters at the same time. We’ll find Kevin. But in the meantime, do we ignore stuff like this? Or are innocent people supposed to die so that you can shop for produce? 

Because while researching, Dean discovers the pattern of deaths repeats every six months, and Sam had’t even noticed it, let alone investigated to try and save these people, meaning the three people who’d died that week were on Sam for not having ganked the thing that killed them the first time it went on a killing spree… Yeah, Dean was angry, but meanwhile Sam had been in that “I don’t fight anymore, I watch the bees” sort of state of mind during that whole year.

Nothing says family like the whole family being dead (or as near as… )

But then Dean discovers Sam was considering going back to college. He tells Sam that this is where they’re best– hunting down monsters together:

**DEAN** : I know where I’m at my best, and that is right here, driving down crazy street next to you.  
 **SAM** : Makes sense.  
 **DEAN** : Yes, it does.  
 **SAM** : Or… maybe you don’t need me. I mean, maybe you’re at your best hacking and slicing your way through all the world’s crap alone, not having to explain yourself to anybody.  
 **DEAN** : Yeah, that makes sense, seeing as I have so many other brothers I can talk to about this stuff.  
 **SAM** : Look, I’m not saying I’m bailing on you. I’m just saying make room for the possibility that we want different things. I mean, I want my time to count for something.  
 **DEAN** : So, what we do doesn’t count?

And this is so important, the first suggestion that Sam and Dean want different things in life, and that eventually that might even be okay. But hooboy does it ever cause a lot of conflict between now and that impossibly distant potential future:

**DEAN** : Wow. Back in business. Got the win. Admit it – feels good, huh? You know, I was thinking about what Randa said about, uh, you know, what it feels like to be a warrior. I get it, man, I do.  
 **SAM** : I know. I know you do. I don’t. Not anymore. Hell, maybe I never did.  
 **DEAN** : Come on, Sam, don’t ruin my buzz, would you?  
 **SAM** : Dean, listen, when this is over – when we close up shop on Kevin and the tablet – I’m done. I mean that.  
 **DEAN** : No, you don’t.  
 **SAM** : Dean, the year that I took off, I had something I’ve never had. A normal life. I mean, I got to see what that felt like. I want that. I had that.  
 **DEAN** : I think that’s just how you feel right now.

And that’s setting up everything that’s come after in the brothers’ relationship with each other, the first chip knocked out of the giant mountain of codependency. It comes roaring back with a vengeance by the end of the season (granted, via the end of their close brush with hubris in their attempt to close the gates of hell), but at least all of this brings those issues glaringly to the surface where they can’t really just keep on keeping on the way they always have anymore.

Need vs want

I think this is also foundational to Dean NEEDING people rather than being able to admit that he WANTS them in his life. That he wants people to stay in his life because he loves them, not because he needs them for a specific purpose.

Because when Dean doesn’t need people anymore, they tend to end up dead… And just loving people, needing them just because he loves them, he sees it as selfish. And his personal needs aren’t enough to keep people he loves from dying.

Boy howdy did he ever internalize that to a toxic extent. 

Dean has clearly not shed the “I’m Poison” thing from s7, and in some ways it only gets worse over the next few seasons, like he’s got to get to the very root of that feeling, plumb the depths of his own self-loathing and become the absolute worst possible version of himself (hello, Demon Dean), and come through the other side with a healthier sense of self, a healthier sense of his relationship with Sam, and an acceptance of his personal need for Cas.

Now he just has to find the right words to express all that. Saying his piece to Mary in 12.22 was a good start.

And oh gosh, 8.04– Michael gave up his personal time with Kate to go along with Brian, because apparently Brian had no one else to hang out with. At the time, it sounds like Sam agreeing to go along with Dean on these hunts, leaving Amelia behind because Dean had no one else to hang out with… And the whole situation turned into a toxic mess. But the parallel isn’t perfect. Dean wasn’t motivated for the same reasons Brian was. Brian wanted what Michael had. Dean didn’t want what Sam had.

Dean just wanted everything to stay the same. But again, his needs are poison.

Heck, this got away from me again didn’t it?

 

Original tags:  


  * spn 8.02 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * spn 8.03 
  * sam sympathizes and dean empathizes 
  * breaking the codependency 
  * spn 12.22 
  * spn 8.04 
  * Anonymous




	36. Chapter 36

[Jul 28, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163529983575/so-many-nice-destiel-moments-in-87-but-i-have-a)

63 notes

**Anonymous asked: So many nice Destiel moments in 8.7! But I have a question about something else, forgive me if it's been addressed before. Why do you think they introduced Donatello in s11 when he was not a part of this group Crowley kidnapped and Samandriel said there weren't any other prophets born yet? Did they forget some of this group survived? :)**

In 9.10:

**METATRON** : He was a threat, but I flipped a switch upstairs, and now that Kevin is gone, there will be no more Prophets. And what about Dean Winchester?

Metatron did something that “deactivated” all the prophets. Those folks were just… regular folks after that. But with Chuck actively working on Earth again, he had the power to pick himself a new prophet. Or maybe it’s something that’s automatic (like the making of Hands of God, that’s just a side effect of coming into contact with Chuck’s power). Who knows? But that’s why Donatello and not one of these potential prophets.

AND OH GOD the Destiel moments in s8 are so damn heartbreaking… because of Naomi. She ORDERED Cas to SPY on Sam and Dean, and report back to her. I mean, he probably would’ve wanted to stay with them anyway, but…

**NAOMI** : Tell me about Sam and Dean.  
**CASTIEL** : The Prophet is being kept safe. The tablet has split in two and the Winchesters are trying to recover the missing piece. Why am I telling you any of this?  
**NAOMI** : It’s not your concern. Help the Winchesters, come when they call. You will report in to me regularly, and you will never remember having done so.  
**CASTIEL** : No. I won’t do that.  
**NAOMI** : [smiling] Now, as you were. They won’t even notice you were gone.

He is on a mission for her, will report back to her, and yet will never remember having done so. So how much of Cas’s choices during this time are HIS, and how much are Naomi influencing him to participate in this mission for her?

Before I talk about that, I’d like to talk about how Crowley came to be the s8 Big Bad, because I think that’s important too. Just like Eve getting pissed off that Crowley and Cas were trying to hack and pillage Purgatory in s6, and just like the monsters were getting pissed in s12 when the BMoL were trying to exterminate them, Crowley’s in the same position regarding Hell in s8. OF COURSE he’s going to do whatever it takes to stop Sam and Dean from locking him and all the rest of the demons in Hell forever.

He hates that place, first off. But sealing up Hell… talk about something having Cosmic Consequences. Even the ATTEMPT to close Hell was enough to unbalance the natural order. And then Metatron went and dumped all the angels out of Heaven. That didn’t do anyone any good, either. So yeah, Crowley wasn’t just being a jerk for nothing here… He wasn’t the Big Bad of s8– Sam and Dean were. Or at least their hubris was.

Okay, back to the Destiel. Cas is still, throughout this time, struggling with his guilt, with the consequences of his actions from s6…

**CASTIEL** : See, it wasn’t that I was weak. I was stronger than you. I pulled away. Nothing you could have done would have saved me, because I didn’t want to be saved.  
**DEAN** : What the hell are you talking about?  
**CASTIEL** : It’s where I belonged. I needed to do penance. After the things I did on earth and in heaven, I didn’t deserve to be out. And I saw that clearly when I was there. I… I planned to stay all along. I just didn’t know how to tell you. You can’t save everyone, my friend… though, you try.

And he doubles down on this in 8.08. He insists he’s fine when Dean asks, but he can’t look Dean in the eye. Dean’s still worried about him, because he still has no idea how Cas managed to get out of Purgatory. CAS still doesn’t know how he got out of Purgatory, because he doesn’t remember his chats with Naomi… But it’s clear that Cas is still “not quite right”:

**DEAN** : Don’t get me wrong. I’m – I’m happy you’re back. I’m – I’m freaking thrilled. It’s just this whole mysterious-resurrection thing – it always has one mother of a downside.  
**CASTIEL** : So, what do you want me to do?  
**DEAN** : Maybe take a trip upstairs.  
**CASTIEL** : To Heaven?  
**DEAN** : Yeah, poke around, see if the God squad can’t tell us how you got out.  
**CASTIEL** : No.  
**DEAN** : Look, man, I – I hate those flying-ass monkeys just as much as you do, but –  
**CASTIEL** : [forcefully] Dean! I said no!  
[After a pause, DEAN closes the laptop, walks over and sits on the edge of the other bed, facing CASTIEL.]  
**DEAN** : Talk to me.  
**CASTIEL** : Dean, I… When I was… bad… and I had all those things – the… the leviathans… writhing inside me… I caused a lot of suffering on earth, but I devastated Heaven. I vaporized thousands of my own kind, and I – I – I can’t go back.  
**DEAN** : 'Cause if you do, the angels will kill you.  
**CASTIEL** : Because if I see what Heaven’s become – what I – [sighs] what I made of it… I’m afraid I might kill myself.

then we get Moosus Interruptus (again), and Dean never gets a chance to probe further into this. Needless to say, it’s part of his underlying concern for Cas for the rest of the season.

Dean tries to treat Cas like the hunter-in-training that he insisted he wanted to be, yet all the while remaining A CONCERN about Cas’s mental state. And throughout this episode, Sam’s recalling his life with Amelia. Dean uses the same phrase– “Living in a dream world”– to describe Fred Jones’s state of mind, when Amelia’s father had used the same phrase to describe what she was trying to do with Sam, playing house together when they were both running from their problems and not really addressing them. Unfortunately, Cas takes that to heart, which is good in some ways and really… unfortunate in others.

Sure, he gets to a point where he doesn’t want to run anymore. He feels like he should face what he’d done. Not just punish himself by hiding and isolating himself (like he was doing in Purgatory), but really begin to make amends if he could.

(Recall that all the while Naomi has other plans for him, that he doesn’t know about consciously, despite acting on her wishes… so his wish to return to Heaven and face the consequences is overruled by Naomi, despite him not realizing that SHE is the one stopping him from acting on that wish. It really starts to mess with his head)

**NAOMI** : I can see what you’re thinking, and I won’t allow it.  
**CASTIEL** : You don’t understand. I have been trying to pretend that I can escape what I did in Heaven, but I can’t. All that pain that I caused – I – I have to come back, to make things right.  
**NAOMI** : And you are… by doing what you’re told. Bottom line – unless I ring my bell, you stay out of Heaven, Castiel.

And back on Earth, Dean is concerned, but after what Cas has said to him over the last few episodes ^^, Dean isn’t about to try and override Cas’s choices now. Dean invited Cas to stay with them, offered him shotgun, and told him he’d done good on the hunt. And Cas seems to be in a much better place than he was at the beginning of the episode. After his conversation with Dean, how honest Cas was with him about his feelings, Dean trusts Cas to talk to him now, to be honest with him if there was really something more going on here. But neither of them know that Cas isn’t fully in control of his choices here:

**SAM** : You – you what, Cas? W-why can’t you come with us?  
**CASTIEL** : I, um… I want to stay with Mr. Jones. Someone should watch over him for a few days just to be safe.  
**DEAN** : Okay, and then what?  
**CASTIEL** : Then I’m not sure. But I know I can’t run anymore.

The parallel at the end of the episode is between Sam and Amelia– just as Sam’s accepted by Amelia’s dad, just as he’s starting to feel good about this life he’s making with her, she gets the call that her husband’s been found alive. Suddenly the choice to stay with her has been taken entirely out of his hands.

Just like Cas’s choices are out of HIS hands, when Naomi tells him no, and forces him to stay on Earth. It messes with him in really big ways. At the beginning of 8.08, he honestly DID want to be a hunter, he honestly seemed happy about staying with Sam and Dean. But once he’d made the conscious decision to return to Heaven and really try to seek forgiveness for what he’d done, to find out how he’d gotten out of Purgatory, Naomi had to directly override that decision. After that, Cas was conflicted and adrift, prevented from what he’d wanted to do.

Naomi actively prevented him from receiving that repentance and understanding that he’d been ready to face. So he has no idea WHY he’s being prevented from this, and he’s honestly confused by it. It really screws with him… Naomi is overriding his free will, and it messes with Cas in so many other ways.

All of this comes to an explosive head in 8.10, as Cas’s orders from Naomi, his own wishes, his own sense of obligation to help Samandriel, his relationship with Dean and Sam… just, everything goes sideways.

We see Naomi fully sock-puppet him, putting words in his mouth and forcing his hand in killing Samandriel, all in the name of keeping the knowledge of the Angel Tablet out of the Winchesters’ hands. Because if they’re decoding the Demon Tablet with the goal of shutting Hell, then what might they do if they got their hands on the Angel Tablet?

But Cas doesn’t CONSCIOUSLY know any of this. Sam and Dean are entirely in the dark about it. But they do know that SOMETHING is wrong with Cas…

It’s obvious to Dean that Cas isn’t himself, and while Dean still has no idea what brought Cas out of Purgatory, or how it might still be affecting him, it’s clear that Cas isn’t entirely acting on his own free will here. He’s acting like Robo Cas in that scene after he kills Samandriel, blood dripping from his eye, and he absently thanks them for their help before booping off with Samandriel’s body without any further explanation of ANYTHING.

It’s so unsettling to Sam and Dean that they completely ward the cabin against angels before even discussing the situation.

**DEAN** : I told you something was off with him since he got back from Purgatory.  
**SAM** : So, what, you think someone’s messing with him or something?  
**DEAN** : Who?  
**SAM** : Angels?  
**DEAN** : Why would the angels have him kill another angel?

Then we don’t even SEE Cas for the next SIX EPISODES. But we do see Dean praying to him. We see him concerned about Cas, getting a bit piney and worried, not knowing if Cas is even okay, but not really having any way to find out. Frustrating as hell, and combined with the whole Hell Trials thing going sideways, worry over Kevin, the discovery of the Bunker, learning about Henry and coming to a small bit of peace over their family’s history, and both guilt and concern over what the trials are doing to Sam… holy cow he’s got a lot on his worry plate…

Then the minute Cas comes back in 8.17, Dean’s thrilled that he’s alive, hurt that Cas had been ignoring his prayers all this time, and suspicious of Cas’s current behavior. It’s clear to him that Cas is lying to him, but he doesn’t understand WHY.

Until Cas is nearly beating him to death and begs Naomi to let him stop hurting Dean. 

It’s the Big Threatening Button theory of mind control here– you can only control people’s actions up to a point before something will go so violently against that person’s own self-interest that they’re able to overcome said brainwashing. And for Cas, that point is Dean.

*stops typing to cry about this, and I’m only up to watching 8.09 here. I’m gonna be a mess when it actually airs next week…*

And knowing ALL of this, that scene where Cas flaps back to Heaven with Samandriel’s body looks unsettlingly similar to Cas leaving the playground with Kelly at the end of 12.19. He delivers nearly the same line to them both times–  he  _thanks_  them for what they’ve done. In 8.10 he boops himself off to points unknown, but in 12.19 he no longer has that ability, so instead of booping HIMSELF off, he boops Sam and Dean unconscious so he can flee with Kelly.

In NEITHER scene is he acting fully of his own accord. The scenarios are just too similar to allow any other explanation.

Cas kills someone under the complete control of another being:

  * Naomi forces him to stab Samandriel 
  * Jack forces his power into Cas to kill Dagon (which yeah, that’s good for Cas because Dagon was about to kill him if he hadn’t… so… )



Cas is behaving in an uncharacteristically fishy manner:

  * Cas is bleeding FROM HIS EYE, acting distant and robotic, not looking directly at Dean, and WE see how Naomi is literally sock-puppeting him– her literal words coming out of his mouth.
  * Cas has this weird golden grace creep across his skin and INTO HIS EYES, acting distant and robotic, not looking directly at Dean, and we can only assume that whatever zapped into his eyes is still affecting him, because we can’t SEE that glow anymore, but stuff like that has ALWAYS had lasting consequences on this show– Dean with the MoC, Cas taking on Sam’s soul damage… that visual effect, the glowy-veined thing, has only ever been used as a Not Good Thing.



I mentioned above that Cas thanked Dean in both of these scenes, but Dean’s line to Cas in both of these scenes is also telling:

  * In 8.10:  **DEAN** : Cas, you okay?
  * in 12.19:   **Dean** : Are you okay? 



And in both circumstances, we’re supposed to be replying HECK NO HE IS NOT OKAY.

(heh, not to mention Amanda Tapping is directly responsible for BOTH of these scenes– directing Cas’s actions via mind control as Naomi in 8.10, and LITERALLY DIRECTING his actions in 12.19, as the LITERAL DIRECTOR of the episode… I find that pleasantly meta)

But there are KEY differences this time around. S8 culminated in Cas having his grace stolen, falling and becoming human AGAINST HIS WILL. But s12 ended with us watching Cas’s grace explode when Lucifer stabbed him with an angel blade, his wing prints burned into the earth. Both the angel and human parts of him are “dead” for now. The spoiler that he’ll be coming back in s13 (or at least the “important parts” will be coming back, and he’ll still be “our Cas”) makes me believe that he might finally have a CHOICE in all of this for once. And that’s what’s different this time.

Leading up to this eventual choice, the situation wouldn’t work unless nothing that’s come up to this point has actually BEEN his freely-made, 100% conscious choice. Because WHAT BROKE THE CONNECTION? An angel blade through the heart. Up to that moment, Cas had been hiding things (or trying to). He’d been running from Dean like he had with the angel tablet after 8.17.

The EXACT same way that he’d run throughout 8.21:

Lookit how run down he is. The tablet was FORCING him to do this, in the interest of its own self-protection. It doesn’t WANT to be found. It doesn’t WANT to be used, by ANYONE. Not demons nor angels nor Winchesters.

REMIND YOU OF ANYONE?!

Like Jack, who doesn’t want to be used by Lucifer or Dagon or EVEN THE WINCHESTERS. He might only have as much self-awareness of that lump of artfully carved rock before he’s born, BUT HE HAS AT LEAST AS MUCH POWER AS THAT ROCK.

(remember Metatron used the tablet to power himself up to nearly god-levels during s9, so we KNOW what an angel who WANTS to tap into that power can achieve. What could an entity who WANTED to tap into Jack’s power potentially use it for?)

But Cas… has no interest in exploiting either the power of the tablet nor Jack’s power for their own personal ends. Like the tablet accepted him as its guardian for that reason, Jack seems to have done the same with Cas in 12.19.

It’s freaking Harry Potter able to grab the Sorcerer’s Stone in the Mirror of Erised because he wanted to PROTECT the stone from being used, while everyone else wanted to use it for their own ends. BOTH TIMES– with the angel tablet and now with Jack.

Why do I keep finding Harry Potter references in this show? Ugh.

So now that Cas has been put into this position YET AGAIN, but in a slightly different way, and with a different perspective after living through the intervening years (which he admitted have “changed him” and have been “the best part of his life” and during which he’s grown to accept the Winchesters as his family, and that he loves them), how will things be DIFFERENT this time around? That’s what s13 will show us.

Because EVERYTHING that’s happened in the intervening years has changed Cas. He lived as a human for a time. He was jerked around by the universe, by Metatron, by God and the Darkness and Lucifer and Heaven… and after all of that, NOTHING ELSE is the same as it was back in s8.

Our lil angel has come so far… :’)

(and yes, this is why it totally would’ve skeeved me out if destiel had actually gone canon back in s8… the eurgh factor was just too high with all the mind control…)

(and whoops I mentioned to lizbob that i was typing up something about s8 destiel several hours ago, and she just pointed out that I hadn’t posted it yet, and I had to confess that I was still typing it a couple hours later, so I figure I should probably stop now… :P)

 

Original tags:

  * spn s8 
  * spn 8.07 
  * spn 8.08 
  * spn 8.10 
  * spn 8.17 
  * spn 8.21 
  * destiel 
  * the scheherazade of supernatural 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * spn s13 speculation 
  * Anonymous 
  * seriously though why doesn't everyone just trust dean's gut instincts it's like he's got an uncanny magical gift here...




	37. Chapter 37

[Jul 28, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163530584785/in-87-i-have-never-understood-why-they-made)

26 notes

**Anonymous asked: In 8.7, I have never understood why they made Castiel slam down on the table as Crowley was reaching for the tablet. Do you think it was a plot contrivance to cause the tablet to break so they would spend a lot of the season drawing out the tablet story? And of course I suppose it gave something for Kevin to do, struggling to read his half. :)**

Um, probably, yes? Plot contrivance? But Cas was SERIOUSLY WEAKENED. He was not up to full power, which was a point that they’d made several times in that episode.

They’d assumed that’s why Dean had been having Cas sightings at the beginning of the episode, because that’s the first thing Cas says to Dean after Hello, Dean:

**CASTIEL** : Yeah, I’ve been trying to reach out, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t at full power. So I couldn’t connect with you. 

Then later when they’re fighting their way through Crowley’s demons at the warehouse while trying to find Kevin, it becomes even clearer:

[CASTIEL and DEAN are walking through the factory. DEAN turns to find a DEMON behind him. He prepares to strike the DEMON with his knife, but the DEMON sends him flying into chains hanging from the ceiling in front of a window. The DEMON stretches out a hand towards CASTIEL. CASTIEL takes a couple of steps backwards before placing a hand on the DEMON’s head and smiting him. Yellow light flows from the DEMON’s eyes and mouth before he drops to the ground. CASTIEL steadies himself on the wall. DEAN picks himself up and puts a hand on CASTIEL’s shoulder.]  
 **DEAN** : What the hell’s going on? You’re not all the way back, are you?

HE WASN’T ALL THE WAY BACK. Cas was operating on a low battery. But when they find the room where Kevin is, Dean can’t pick the lock fast enough, so Cas decides to go in alone– and Dean’s last words to him before he boops himself in to confront Crowley are:

**DEAN** : Cas, no. You’re not strong enough. 

Because it was TRUE. Crowley even tried to call his bluff, because that’s all it was. His power display, pulling the wings and the light out, it was nothing more than a threat display that he couldn’t actually follow through on. He was  SeriOUSLY WEAKENED.

**CROWLEY** : Maybe you can get it up, but you can’t keep it up.  
[The light coming from CASTIEL intensifies. Shadows of CASTIEL’s unfurling wings appear on the wall behind him.]  
 **CROWLEY** : You’re bluffing!  
 **CASTIEL** : Do you want to take that chance?  
[CASTIEL stretches out a hand to CROWLEY. CROWLEY reaches for the stone tablet on the table. CASTIEL smashes the tablet and the table. CROWLEY disappears while holding half the tablet. DEAN bursts into the room and goes to CASTIEL, who is lying on the floor. The light that was emanating from CASTIEL is gone]

HE WAS BLUFFING. And the proof of that is the fact that he collapsed to the floor. He couldn’t have fought off Crowley entirely alone, so he did the only thing he could. He stopped Crowley from taking the ENTIRE demon tablet, forcing him to flee without Kevin, too. He did the best he could under the circumstances.

He did what he had to do. (obligatory gagging noises at that phrase)

Original tags:

  * spn 8.07 
  * castiel winchester 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * Anonymous




	38. Chapter 38

[Aug 4, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163794473695/okay-this-is-why-my-brain-has-decided-to-torment)

22 notes

Okay, this is why my brain has decided to torment me with today while rewatching 9.06. This is how my brain is crediting Bobo for balancing out two ????? things from Bucklemming episodes. My brain frequently credits Bobo for good deeds done, but this is probably stretching things a bit.

Up for comparison today: 9.03, 9.06, 9.09.

Let’s start at the end of this tenuous connection, with 9.09. Cas mentions April and the information she gave him before… torturing and stabbing him to death. And Dean awkwardly bumbles on in what appears to be some sort of manly-man slap on the back for banging the chick:

**DEAN** : Yeah. (awkward pause) She was hot.  
 **CASTIEL** : So hot. And very nice.  
 **DEAN** (appreciatively) Mm.  
 **CASTIEL** : Up to the point she started torturing me.  
 **DEAN** : Yeah. Well, not every hookup’s perfect. 

I know, right? Ugh

But the phrasing tripped me up here, because Cas used the exact same words in 9.06 in a VERY DIFFERENT CONTEXT:

**CASTIEL** [on phone, holding the baby] Nora, she’s hot. She’s really hot. Please just call – call me. Call – call back. If I don’t hear back, I’m taking her to the hospital.  
[CAS hangs up. The baby continues to fuss, and he waits for a few seconds to see if the phone rings. He puts it in his pocket, and feels the baby’s head again.]  
 **CASTIEL** (worried) Okay, Tanya, we’re taking a little walk.  
[He walks toward the door with the baby, presumably to take her to the hospital. Reaching the door, he opens it – to reveal the Rit Zien angel.]  
 **ANGEL** : Hello, Castiel.

The BABY is hot, feverish. And she’d been “very nice” at first. Up to the point she started torturing him. And the “hookup” Cas believed he’d been invited out on by Nora ended up being FAR from perfect.

Dean knew ALL of this, obviously. Can you just imagine for a moment that during the fanfic gap after Dean and Cas defeat the Rit Zien angel that Dean would’ve tried to console Cas, to cheer him up about his misunderstanding about the date? About his entire babysitting experience? About his frustration that he couldn’t just cure Tanya of her fever, and couldn’t even tell what was wrong with her like he could’ve done with his grace?

The fact that Cas and Dean were both SMILING over this conversation in 9.09 makes me want to believe that there was an “inside joke just between us” quality to this exchange. Especially with the grin Dean gives him with the “Not every hookup’s perfect” line.

Ephraim then TORTURED Cas at Nora’s house, when Dean realized that Cas was in danger and raced back to defend him. Dean hears part of Ephraim’s speech, and brings Cas the means (an angel blade) to kill Ephraim and save himself. This is what Dean overhears:

**EPHRAIM** : You say you want to live. But you can’t see what I see. By choosing a human life, you’ve already given up. You … chose … death.  
[EPHRAIM lifts a hand to CASTIEL’s forehead.]  
[DEAN slides the knife across the floor towards CASTIEL.]

We can only assume that after this Dean helped Cas tend to Tanya’s fever (because he’d know how after taking care of Sammy), and then they cleaned up Nora’s house together. Before they leave together for at least 8 hours of fanfic gap, Sam calls and tells Dean that there is no reversing the angel fall spell, which Dean chooses not to mention to Cas.

ALL of this is weighing on Dean tremendously. He hears that Cas “chose” this human life, but Dean didn’t hear the other part of Cas’s speech with Ephraim. Dean believes that Cas was only tricked into the spell by Metatron and left human against his will. Dean feels GUILTY that Cas is “stuck as a human.” He didn’t hear Cas declare that he wants to live, even as a human himself.

Sure they may have talked about all of this afterward. But Dean STILL felt guilty that he couldn’t invite Cas to come back to the bunker with him. But it is after this point that Dean really does start pushing “Ezekiel” to get done fixing Sam already. It’s also the point where Cas decides he can’t just sit back and live a “normal human life” and does what he can to try to help the angels.

There’s still a tremendous amount of misunderstanding between them, with each of them trying to protect the other as best they can. But hell if it doesn’t make it a little easier to assume they at least used that fanfic gap to try and comfort each other and try to take this terrible circumstance they’re both in and make something not quite so horrifying out of it.

Original tags:

 

  * spn 9.03 
  * spn 9.06 
  * spn 9.09 
  * the scheherazade of supernatural 
  * this is a bobo berens appreciation blog 
  * bucklemming canon acrobatics 
  * this is exactly the kind of extreme pretzelification my mind attempts in order to make their episodes less icky 
  * in this case i'm giving full credit to bobo for making it bearable because it was only his episode that made this alternate read possible 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch




	39. Chapter 39

[Aug 7, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/163909940610/i-dont-have-time-gishwhes-to-write-full-meta-on)

14 notes

I don’t have time (gishwhes) to write full meta on it, but I probably have in the past anyway. So have these assorted rambling thoughts on 9.11.

Dean taking on the MoC just two episodes after Cas took on the stolen grace– the combination of these things while Sam was FINALLY restored to “normal”– was huge in terms of flipping the storyline upside down for a couple of seasons. (*ongoing grumbling about how damn long they dragged this out*)

Right, time is short (gishwhes) get to the point Mittens.

There is just SO MUCH in this episode about humanity, and what it means to be human, both with Sam and Cas AND with Dean. Robbie Thompson episodes (and for some reason his 11′s specifically) seem to reach far into both future and past canon to grab the story and spin entire seasons around his plot points.

Cas goes as far back as s6, reminding Sam that he can be a good liar, for having deceived and betrayed both him and Dean during that time, while also mourning the loss of human things he’d come to appreciate beginning in 9.01.

(seriously guys, the narrative tells us explicitly in text here that even Cas and Sam feel that Cas was the big bad in s6, can we stop looking at that season through rose-colored glasses already? Varied “interpretations” of text are one thing, negating entire seasons worth of text to make an interpretation work are another)

Sam gets some clarity about humanity and being human from an angel:

**SAM** : Dean’s gone, okay? This is on me now, and if I can find Gadreel… I can fix this.  
[SAM sets a box down on a table next to a gurney. He talks off his plaid button-up shirt leaving him in just a thin t-shirt.]  
Now…being a human means settling your debts.  
[SAM hands the box to CASTIEL and sits down on the gurney.]  
Let’s start balancing the books.

But Cas refuses to help Sam settle his debt by throwing his own life away– which is how 8.23  SHOULD’VE gone, instead of it becoming about Sam and Dean’s toxic codependency. It should’ve been about what Sam SHOULD be held responsible for, and what cost ANY human should have to pay, especially in service of what amounts to something with the sort of potentially catastrophic cosmic consequences as shutting the gates of Hell forever. (again, hubris)

**CASTIEL** : I’ve healed your wounds completely.  
 **SAM** : And the Grace?  
 **CASTIEL** : Well, whatever Grace was inside you is gone now. What’s left of Gadreel is in here. We’ll just have to try the spell with what we have.  
 **SAM** : Damn it.  
 **CASTIEL** : Sam, I want Gadreel to pay as much as you do. But nothing is worth losing you. You know, being human, it didn’t just change my view of food. It changed my view of you. I mean, I can relate now to how you feel.  
 **SAM** : What are you talking about?  
 **CASTIEL** : The only person who has screwed things up more consistently than you…is me. And now I know what that guilt feels like. And I know what it… I know what it means to feel sorry, Sam. I am sorry.  
 **SAM** : I know.  
 **CASTIEL** : You know, old me – I would’ve have just kept going. I would’ve jammed that needle in deeper until you died because the ends always justified the means. But what I went though – Well, that PB and J taught me that angels can change, so…who knows? Maybe Winchesters can, too.

Cas HAS screwed things up consistently (like his conversation with Dean in 9.10 where he forgave Dean for everything, because he was doing the wrong things for the right reasons…  _because Cas understands that in a painfully personal way_. Cas and Dean can only forgive each other because they have both done the exact same thing. (and yes, this is another reason that ignoring the fact that Cas was the big bad in s6 is NOT something we want to imagine, because this mutual understanding between Dean and Cas is the MAIN thing that sustains their relationship through the absolute darkest possible times for them that lie ahead in the next few seasons, and the MAIN thing that even makes it POSSIBLE AT ALL for them to forgive one another, to understand one another, and brings them closer together by the end of s11.

okay back to gishwhes now.

 

Original tags: 

  * spn 9.11 
  * spn 9.10 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * we don't talk about season six




	40. Chapter 40

[Aug 15, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164205836060/after-lamenting-my-life-choices-for-like-six-hours)

55 notes

After lamenting my life choices for like six hours tonight while rewatching 12.20, I really feel it can’t be said strongly enough how closely tied it is to 12.23. It’s not a direct foreshadowing, or an exact parallel, but a heart-wrenching twist of an even more horrific series of events. I mean, we all know that Cas will be back. We know that Mary will be back. We know that Dean is grieving for them now but… we also understand how stories work and how Main Characters are treated compared to how side characters are treated, you know?

So despite 12.20 being an Agonizing Feelsfest™ after knowing how 12.23 ends, I do have to admit that things could definitely be worse.

The absolutely relentless Cas references, the PURPLE. ALL THE PURPLE. 

Right from the start of the episode we’re invited to associate everything purple with Cas. Cas is the purple stuff. It’s absolutely inescapable. [Even the picture above the front desk in the lobby is all about Cas](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/search/spn+6.20%2Bspn+12.20).

Tasha is the worst-case scenario version of Mary in 12.22 and 12.23– a mother murdered, resurrected, losing her agency, and then finally lost forever (but we know Mary is still alive on the other side of the glowy vagina portal at least).

I’m having a hard time making any concrete and succinct parallel like that to Cas, though… aside from all the trappings of the episode screaming CAS CAS CAS at me while all this horror unfolds. Cas is just as present in this narrative about loss of agency as Mary is, but on a different level.

Some of the references are blatant (Tasha being stabbed in the back, Alicia being stabbed with a sword), some are FAR more subtle (the dark-haired doll dressed in purple looming over the opening scene).

**DEAN** : Cas said that he had faith in Lucifer Jr.? What the hell is that supposed to mean?  
Sam looks just as frustrated and confused as Dean. He shakes his head and turns to Dean.  
 **SAM** : I don’t know. I mean, look, this doesn’t make any sense to me either, Dean. But if we wanna have some shot at finding Cas, the we have to…I don’t know. Uh, try and think like him.  
 **DEAN** : How? Seriously I mean up until now if Cas messed up, if he did something wrong, but he thought it was for the right reasons, I got it. Right? But last night, when I looked at him, I did not recognize the guy staring back at me. 

I think this is key here, what Dean says at the end there. Even when he’s disagreed with Cas, even when Cas has knowingly done the wrong thing for the right reasons (like what he did in s6), Dean at least understood Cas’s motives. He understood that Cas was truly trying to do good in the end (even when his methods and plans were reprehensible… Dean gets that, especially after having made his own reprehensible choices like taking on the Mark of Cain… he doesn’t have any rocks to throw from inside his glass house).

But he also recognizes something is very different this time.

Unlike Max and Alicia, who didn’t notice that something was very wrong with Tasha, who trusted and accepted that she was their mother because they’d never had any reason to doubt her, Dean noticed something wrong with Cas  _immediately_. Because he DOES have experience dealing with Cas not being himself. It goes almost back to the very beginnings of their relationship. Really BEFORE the beginnings of their relationship, 4.01 lays it all out that Dean doesn’t trust whatever the thing was that pulled him out of Hell. It took years to forge their friendship into what it is now, but even back in 4.20 Dean had no trouble identifying something was different about Jimmy, and then that something was again very wrong with Cas.

Dean knew something was wrong with Cas all through s8 when he was being controlled by Naomi. He knew there was something wrong with Cas when he was actually Lucifer in s11.

_Dean knows Cas_ , and he knows that Cas wasn’t himself in 12.19. And that’s reflected again and again in 12.20.

That inability to accept that twig!Tasha was not her mother ended up costing Alicia her life, and it drove Max to do the unthinkable. Worst-case scenario.

*mentally dwells on the final shot of Dean kneeling over Cas in 12.23 and feels his abject suffering*

 

Original Tags: 

  * spn 12.20 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * no i'm not that far in the rewatch yet i just had to watch this episode today for synopsizing purposes and i didn't feel like suffering alone so i'm sharing out the pain :P 
  * spn 12.23 
  * Gah it’s 2:30 in the morning and I’ve been dwelling on all this for the last seven hours and i should really go to sleep now




	41. Chapter 41

[Aug 15, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164217476530/tinkdw-elizabethrobertajones)

367 notes

(posted here with apologies to lizbob and tink and everyone else, but I wanted my comments saved and context matters...)

[tinkdw](https://tinkdw.tumblr.com/post/164215015222/elizabethrobertajones-amwritingmeta):

> [elizabethrobertajones](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/164212281538/amwritingmeta-foxymoley-young-dean-eating):
>
>> [amwritingmeta](https://amwritingmeta.tumblr.com/post/164208841265/foxymoley-young-dean-eating-cake-considering-all):
>>
>>> [foxymoley](https://foxymoley.tumblr.com/post/164105657968/young-dean-eating-cake-considering-all-the):
>>>
>>>> Young Dean eating cake. Considering all the bi!dean cake/pie meta is this relevant? Help me clever people, you’re my only hope. [@amwritingmeta](https://tmblr.co/mJMxShJRyz49M5xA_f12xGA) [@tinkdw](https://tmblr.co/mfCCEp6XoX-GAEcJPdBiLxA) [@destielette](https://tmblr.co/mIVD5PNfnucoqsq58Va4h7w)
>>> 
>>> Hey foxy lovely!
>>> 
>>> This is a fun prompt - I thank you!!
>>> 
>>> Here is my off-the-cuff impression of Dean, food, pie and cake and yes, I’ll be restating previous meta, but so be it! I’ve not talked about this on this blog so I’m excited to get to do it now! Yayyy! *claps hands*
>>> 
>>> **Firstly** : Yes, Young Dean eating cake is absolutely relevant, because of - as you point out - what food and pie and cake represents to Dean Winchester.
>>> 
>>> **~~_Trash_~~  Food**:  _the life of the hunter = **saving people, hunting things**_  
>  **Pie** :  _home and stability (the longing for his mother and **his longing for love** )_  
>  **Cake** : _at first being reluctant, but open, to **trying new things**_
>>> 
>>> Now, I nabbed this off superwiki  –>
>>> 
>>> _There have been occasions when Dean has been tempted by cake:_
>>> 
>>>   * _3.02 **The Kids Are Alright** : Dean is seen eating birthday cake with a young Ben Braeden at his birthday party._
>>>   * _7.03 **The Girl Next Door** : While laid up with his broken leg, Dean asks Sam to go on a food run. When Dean asks, “Where’s the pie?” Sam says, “You got cake, that’s close enough, right?” Dean does not eat the piece of cake._
>>>   * _7.06 **Slash Fiction** : Dean ask Sam to buy him something that “rhymes with songs songs” i.e. Ding Dongs which a small chocolate cake with a creamy center._
>>>   * _10.12 **About a Boy** : 14-year-old Dean snacks on cake while he is held captive, he didn’t much care for it._
>>>   * _10.15 **The Things They Carried** : In a police station, there is a birthday cake on the desk. The police officer offers cake to Sam and Dean, but Sam declines on their behalf. Dean looks disappointed, and sneaks a fingerful of icing._
>>> 

>>> 
>>> So, let’s talk about this progression of Dean and cake. 
>>> 
>>> **At 14** : he’s brought cake and tastes it, but he doesn’t much care for it
>>> 
>>> **At 28** : he absentmindedly chows down on birthday cake that he got for himself while ogling a woman (having just escaped the ogling of two women himself)
>>> 
>>> **At 32** : he refuses to eat the piece of cake Sam has brought him to substitute pie, but a mere few episodes later he makes an actual request for a cake-like snack
>>> 
>>> **At 35** : he eyes the cake at the police station the same way he eyes his male crushes (same freaking lopsided little grin) and then he quickly pulls a finger through the thick frosting, stealing a taste
>>> 
>>> It’s interesting that  **every time cake is brought to him he rejects it**  or doesn’t much care for it, while if he can  **request it or get it for himself he’s increasingly into it**  over the years. 
>>> 
>>> I kind of love the  **contrast**  here between how  **Dean’s performing persona**  is something that has been forced upon him by how he was raised, how John instilling in him from so early on that he has to protect Sammy made it imperative that Dean dress himself in the same exact visage as his ex-marine father. 
>>> 
>>> Whereas all those layers underneath, those layers that make up who he truly is, are safeguarded by a  **deep need for individuality** , which is why he won’t have cake thrust upon him:  **he wants it to be and needs it to be his own choice to eat that cake**.
>>> 
>>> [Originally posted by ilovedean](https://tmblr.co/Z-YOAl1gNwoHK)
>>> 
>>> This simple scene is amazing.
>>> 
>>>   * Dean is attracted to the cake ( **like wow CAKE** )
>>>   * Sam gesture for him  ** _not to indulge on the job_**
>>>   * Dean  **can’t resist the temptation of the Cake**
>>>   * **_Not even in front of a man in uniform_**  who is representative of the authoritative figure Dean has always struggled with –>  **a reminder of John Winchester** , and around and around it goes
>>> 

>>> 
>>> But in this small moment we see Dean Winchester, at 35 years old, finally, albeit surreptitiously, being unable to resist indulging in his craving not only in front of Sam, but in front of someone representative of his father.
>>> 
>>> **Big. Step. Forward. Toward. S11.**
>>> 
>>> Where all the  **walls**  he’s built up  **begin to show their cracks**  thanks to Amara and the theme of Lovethat takes focus throughout that whole season. The entire plot progression of S11 forces Dean to admit to himself that what he feels for Cas - however much he’s doubted it, questioned it, refused to acknowledge it, pushed it down, fought to ignore it - is the real thing:  ** _he’s in love with that dick angel, and he’s pining for him, and there’s no way around it._**
>>> 
>>> And so, with as small a scene as the one above, set in some random police station where Dean indulges in a piece of cake, it still is a gorgeous character reveal of how he’s progressed from his 14 year old self to his 35 year old self. I don’t think it’s by accident this progression is actually shown to us in the same season and only a few episodes apart.
>>> 
>>> **Everything connects.**
>>> 
>>> I love this show!!
>> 
>> Hi, uh, so I read my entire Dean vs Cake tag yesterday. Apologies for walking right into this post while it’s all crystal clear in my mind :P
>> 
>> It’s more complicated than that in 10x12 - he’s chowing down on that (pink, flowery) cake enthusiastically, until Tina voices her opinion it might be poisoned. Dean freezes, as if only just thinking, oh shit, maybe she’s right, and he puts the cake down as if it is poisoned.
>> 
>> Later he recounts this to Sam, and tells him flat out the cake was horrible, too dry, like it was the Worst Thing That Ever Happened To Him, and he had never liked it in the first place.
>> 
>> The thinking is, this is a metaphor for Dean learning not to like things for himself, that the idea of the cake being poisoned is cultural toxic opinions and very much a metaphor for and ACTUAL 14 year old Dean (using a proxy of a temporarily 14 year old Dean) learning that, for a wild example, liking guys is a Bad And Terrible Thing, and despite his initial interest, when society tells him it’s bad he not just stops doing it but presents a facade to deny he ever liked it and cut off all connection to it (and in 9x10 he equates his being toxic with hurting people and hurting Sam especially and that’s sort of a different thing entirely except that I think Dean’s sense of the word “poison” has sooo much mileage for making him feel bad about himself that using it in this context about the cake to me also feels like it connects much deeper into his psyche). 
>> 
>> It’s essentially the first big break we got in the performing Dean meta that the show was intending to seriously break down the facade, and started us off by presenting a little parable of Dean Likes The Thing, Dean Learns Not To Like The Thing Because It Is Bad, Dean Says He Hates The Thing Forever. All while in an adolescent face so we could connect to this happening to him for real on more serious subjects in his actual formative years. I think until that point while you could talk about performing!Dean it was very much in incidental cracks and breaks or things which were much more ambiguous about the writing.
>> 
>> The writer knowingly asked fans what were the ~most Dean things~ while writing it and incorporated rock music, hook ups, and pie into the episode as Taylor Swift, not hooking up with Tina even at the bar while adults (instead having a sweet conversation and not even getting plastered, and Tina walks out with exchanged fond looks but nothing more), and Dean enjoying cake. It was a knowing attempt to game everything we know and assume about Dean and present it in a different form. 12x11 is a similar episode gaming the knowledge we have about Dean and turning it on its head, and I read the episodes as having very similar intentions. As well as earlier examples like 12x11 playing off of 4x06, which did similar. All of these episodes compromise the core Dean in some way for the sake of exposition on his character. 
>> 
>> At the end of 10x12 (in a scene they had to wait to get permission for the music, went back to film, and Jensen tried to protest but it was too important to the story so they HAD to do it in the end because no of course it’s not like Dean and OOC, that’s the entire point Jensen) we see the demonstration via Shake It Off that Dean has changed and his complaint about enjoying a TS song on the bus under the mask of being a teenager earlier in the episode was either more The Lady Doth Protest Too Much, or else Dean thinking that was a rational explanation for why he enjoyed the song when Dean Winchester Does Not Like Pop Music. At the end of the episode as an adult he in sound mind decides not to do what Sam expects, and turn the music way up and drive off with the car practically dancing to the music :P
>> 
>> This was the next most important thing - that Dean embraced liking something un-Dean like in front of Sam with no pretences or comment. It betrays that he had liked TS already in the episode and his pretence about it was all BS, while the cake itself was still veiled in teenage shame.
>> 
>> In 10x13 the first thing we see Dean doing is eating a croissookie, a hybrid food, a best of both worlds pie&cake monstrosity, a hybrid *word* which will be important in season 11 - it’s a harbinger of that theme. Later we see a dating app with a sexy photo of a woman in a bikini holding a pie in about the most … well a whole bunch of us had to go out and google the opposite word to “phallic” which I think we agreed was “yonic” …. way possible. (point down, over her lower stomach, dripping cherries and a nice pile of cream on top >.>). At this point it was abundantly clear that pie had left the building for the other meaning they went back to in season 12, of Dean’s comfort/soul food to do with mother and home. (5x15 kills me with this theme of pies and mothers.) Pie and Cake was officially bisexual subtext.
>> 
>> In 10x15 Dean sees cake and he wants it BAD, and it’s freely offered, and Sam says no, and stops him, physically, from accepting a slice. (It mirrors 3x08 and him knocking Dean’s hand away from taking the peanut brittle from Mr Pagan God, which was maybe more sensible :P) There was a lot of discussion of Sam policing Dean’s behaviour, but at least on my side of the discussion & people I was agreeing with, it swung around to being more of a metaphor for Sam unknowingly doing this (he was trying to keep up FBI appearances - in 9x13 you can see his discomfort and annoyance about Dean chowing down on the powder doughnut, EVEN THOUGH Donna (also of “salty and sweet” connections from 11x07, mirroring something else bi that Dean said that episode) is eating hers JUST as messily and therefore it’s socially acceptable behaviour, as Donna is the authority figure who sets the tone of their behaviour. Dean socially chameleons his way into this fine. In 11x15 he is being offered cake by the authorities again, so why not. 
>> 
>> (The guy’s partner made it - ambiguous references to gender.) 
>> 
>> Sam drags them off to “Sammy’s” where they get socially acceptable burgers.
>> 
>> Anyway the point is there was a long discussion about Dean self-policing FOR Sam and the TS moment being one of the only times he doesn’t do it. (Similar to him saying he won’t apologise for loving Dory in 12x11, but nothing was altered about him any more in 10x12.) All of it seemed to offer a fairly sensible food-based metaphor for Dean’s behaviour, with cake standing in as the forbidden and withheld desires, and for one reason or another Dean is held back from getting the cake.
>> 
>> That’s the bare bones background to the later pie and cake stuff. :P 
> 
> Fast forward to 12x05 and :
> 
> \- Sam calls Dean out on his sublimation and Dean acknowledges that he does this  
> \- Dean doesn’t WANT pie, meanwhile he’s upset because Mary and Cas are gone.  
> \- Mary represents pie through the family/home theme and Cas cake as Dean’s male focused romantic attention  
> \- Dean has apparently enjoyed a big slice of actual chocolate cake IN FRONT OF SAM and neither one said anything about it, it just HAPPENED and no one made a big deal of it  
> \- Dean then says he now “deserves” pie after doing his job well
> 
> (Dean’s later stuff with Mary is all about him learning that he deserves more from her and therefore deserves love and happiness and this helps him move forwards in general but in big part to accept himself and the fact that he likes cake/men/Cas in particular).
> 
> In a season focused entirely on Dean letting go of his facade, a ton of Dean/Cas romantic upping the ante, where Mary represents pie through family and Cas cake because well Cas is now Dean’s focus for his bisexual male-focused attention as he’s not just kinda fancying but full on in love with the guy.
> 
> Where Dean outright acknowledged his sublimation to then start not doing so after 12x22.
> 
> *Nothing to see here*

(since I’m currently watching 10.11, and about to watch 10.12, I feel this is timely…)

It was partially derailed in s10 (after 10.15 and the sweat lodge dehydration, though some writers continued to reference this theme even through the accordioning of Dean’s personal arc in favor of escalating everything up to Chuck/Amara levels, before finally coming back around to Dean in a personal way in s12), but there’s a distinct progression in mid s10:

10.09: Dean loses control of himself, kills Randy and company, and decides that he’s got to do something to regain control over what the Mark is doing to him

10.10: via torturing Metatron, the harder he pushes to regain self-control, the faster it slips away from him…

10.11. Dean decides that if control doesn’t work, maybe austerity will. The mark wants to be fed, so he’ll put it on a diet, and literally chooses all the healthy foods that Sam has always chosen for himself (and have been associated with Sam’s struggle with feeling “pure”). Egg white omelette, green smoothies, kale wraps… If he just denies himself the things he wants (booze, burgers… and more booze…) (refrains from going on a long rant about locking away Charlie’s dark half forever not being the answer to her problems and isn’t that exactly the key to all of s11…) 

10.12 and 10.13: discussed very thoroughly above ^^ 

But in 10.13 Dean flipped this austerity script. Denying himself the things he wanted wasn’t helping, and in some ways was only making his situation worse.

*pause this meta train, lift it off the tracks entirely for most of a season following, then drop it back into place in time for the mid s11 triptych about love and love and we have a theme*

 

Original Tags: 

  * spn 10.12 
  * dean vs pie vs cake 
  * mittens makes peace with s10 via dabb's spitewriting of s12: an ongoing saga 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * performing dean 
  * dean winchester is bilingual




	42. Chapter 42

[The maddest thing a man can do](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164299862455/the-maddest-thing-a-man-can-do)

[Aug 17, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164299862455/the-maddest-thing-a-man-can-do)

108 notes

I’m currently suffering my way through a rewatch of late s10, which is the point where Cas’s personal character development was temporarily sidetracked along with Dean’s, in favor of writing the SPN universe’s origin story in s11… but my s10 complaints are taking a back seat for this post, and instead I’m gonna focus on how 10.18 has brought us (FINALLY!) to where Cas is after 12.23. That’s EXACTLY where the story’s led us.

(I’ve been talking about this with Lizbob this morning, in relation to the reply she posted earlier about Dean and Jody connected up through Biggersons, Gas N Sip, TDK slammers, and 13.03 speculation, because this is the Cas version of that speculation. This is the text post equivalent of the red string conspiracy picture: “okay I’m writing the thing. 10.18, 10.20 *which I’m watching right now*, 10.23, 11.10, 11.22, 11.23, 12.01, 12.02, 12.03,  12.09, 12.15, 12.19, 12.23… *ties red strings around all of them* “

So that’s my premise for the progression of Cas’s journey to the Maddest Thing A Man Can Do. We get all this exposition from Metatron in 10.18, reminding us of Cas’s humanity (that Metatron forced on him in 8.23, and which he’s struggled with throughout s9– sacrificed in 9.09 when he stole Theo’s grace in order to survive and alert Dean about “Ezekiel” having died in the fall, lamented in 9.11 with Sam, struggled with nearly dying in early s10 before Crowley gave him another infusion of stolen grace in 10.03, and then pushed to the side in the name of saving Dean through most of the rest of s10… until Metatron brings this back to the surface in 10.18, sending Cas off on a series of personal side-missions to collect enough Experience Points to prepare him for the Final Boss Battle. But I’m getting ahead of myself here…)

**METATRON** : Really? That song is a classic. Yeah I hear you. I do. And you’re right. Inclement weather on the day of your nuptials and the wrong cutlery at inopportune times is hardly ironic. But it sure is catchy. Yeah, fair point. Can’t argue taste. But since I became human, it’s just so….strange. All these feelings, you know? I mean, I can feel music. Like that last song, “Sussudio.” I don’t even know what it’s about and I love it. I always enjoyed lyrics, words, stories. Gives me goose bumps. And Goosebumps – don’t even get me started on those. Creepy! And yet….arousing.

and then

**METATRON** : Mmmmmm! O…M…Me! Oh. Food. Glorious Food. Mmm. All the countless descriptions in so many books, but those are just words. Oh, the taste, the – the actual taste…. I had no idea. Oh. And the process. Goes in here [he points to his mouth]…comes out here [points toward his rear]. Sorcery. I mean, you used to be human. Don’t you miss all this?  
 **CASTIEL** : No. I don’t miss digestion. I don’t miss indigestion.  
 **METATRON** : No, no, no. Not that. I mean, don’t you miss the feeling of all this? Like the taste of these waffles. The sound of a child’s laughter. Look at us. We’re a couple of angels who’ve touched not only the divine, but the mundane. You and I have a lot in common.

and then

**CASTIEL** : “What is the maddest thing a man can do?” It’s a riddle? What – what’s the answer?  
 **METATRON** : Beats me. I’ve only been a man a day. Um, the – the answer to the riddle will lead to another book. And inside that book, you’ll find your Grace. We’re gonna work this out together, okay? Teamwork.

leading up to:

**CASTIEL** : What we did back there was unfortunate. No more of our brothers and sisters should die.  
 **METATRON** : Brothers and sisters? Listen to you. Still spitting out the company line like anyone cares. Like we’re actually a family? When what we really are – are a bunch of glowing lights filled with self-loathing or delusions of grandeur. Or both.  
 **CASTIEL** : You shut up!  
 **METATRON** : No! If I’m gonna die, I want answers. Like, who are you now? Like, you’re obviously not an angel of the Lord. And what about all of this walking the earth like Caine from “Kung Fu” crap? Cleaning up Heaven’s messes. How many more rogue angels are there out there? And, what are you gonna do once you’re done with all that? Go back to Heaven? Please. The angel formerly known as Hannah has restored order up top. Smoothest it’s run since God cut the ribbon on the pearly gates. So tell me, Castiel, truly, what is your mission now?  
 **CASTIEL** : You shut up and keep looking. [Castiel walks away.]  
 **METATRON** : Well…Cannot say I didn’t try. [He activates the sigils and walks toward Castiel in the next row. Castiel is coughing and collapses.] Poor Castiel. Swam so far just to drown in shallow waters. Isn’t it ironic? Don’t ya think?

Metatron has just stated Cas’s eventual entire journey, even though like most of Metatron’s “stories,” it all happens in ways he never expected. Metatron uses his clue (“What two things do you need to succeed in life?” Ignorance and confidence.) to find the Demon Tablet, while Cas uses the Cervantes quote to find his grace. 

What’s the maddest thing a man can do? Let himself die.

The “human” part of Cas that he’d been struggling to reconcile with the angel part since 9.01 is sacrificed in a last-ditch effort to save himself from burning out entirely. But instead of being the END of Castiel’s journey, it’s truly the very beginning of it. It’s more a reuniting of these two halves, and the next two seasons are about Cas coming to terms with what he wants, and with who he is, where he belongs, and where he wants to be regardless. Metatron spells it all out:

  * who are you now? Like, you’re obviously not an angel of the Lord. And what about all of this walking the earth like Caine from “Kung Fu” crap? Cleaning up Heaven’s messes. How many more rogue angels are there out there?
  * And, what are you gonna do once you’re done with all that? Go back to Heaven? Please.
  * So tell me, Castiel, truly, what is your mission now?



And as we’ve come to see post 12.10, 12.12, 12.15, and 12.19, maybe the problem is the fact he feels he has a “mission” at all… Maybe what he needs is to finally TRULY BELIEVE that he is a full-fledged member of the Winchester family, and not just because that’s where he wants to be. He needs to understand that THEY want HIM to be an equal part of the family, and not just because he’s useful to them or because of what he can do for them.

(aside to point out the episode immediately following this one also deals with this theme of a man letting himself die being the maddest thing he can do, but that sharing the burden out between multiple people has the power to save everyone… but I know I have meta on this comparison back in my 10.19 tag so I’m gonna shut up about it here *ties that red string into a neat bow and moves on*)

Cas spends 10.20 tying his own personal little red strings into neat bows with regards to Claire and his obligations to her for feeling responsible for everything that’s happened to her and the loss of her parents, but this was just step one in making peace with himself. Helping Claire find her mother, and then helping her move on with her own life, giving her some peace over Jimmy’s sacrifice, helping her (and the audience) understand that Cas is (and has been since 4.22) an entirely separate entity from Jimmy, and that Jimmy’s arc for Cas is officially over. From that point on, Cas can progress through his own ordeal of humanity.

Of course he gets sidetracked by the narrative (as all of TFW do while dealing with the Darkness), but as I said earlier, each of those side quests provides him more insight into his own situation. All those episodes I mentioned above provide him the chance to sort through his own sense of guilt, his unresolved feeling of obligation to Heaven, to repairing the damage he’s done through releasing the Leviathan, for the chain reaction that led to at the end of s8 and his feelings of complicity with Metatron in the Angel Fall event, and the subsequent damage to Heaven and Earth that the ensuing battles have led to… right the way up to his complicity with Sam in using the Book of the Damned to “cure” Dean of the Mark and releasing the Darkness…

This led directly to the sense of personal desperation that prompted him to say yes to Lucifer, feeling that he was useless for anything else, and choosing to make what he believed was the necessary sacrifice so that Sam and Dean wouldn’t have to. This is the same logic that drove him to agree to work with Kelvin in 12.15, and to steal the Colt from Dean in 12.19. He was going to do the Terrible Bad Thing (killing an innocent– Kelly) so that Dean and Sam wouldn’t have to.

Up to that point, he’d been trying to do the maddest thing an angel can do… to sacrifice himself in the name of humanity (and Humanity). Again, a Metatron quote, that Cas may have draped himself in the flag of heaven, but in the end he’d done it all in the name of one man. And while Cas may have understood this on an intellectual level, ever since 10.18 when he’d taken on the burden of his own grace again, as Metatron had told him, as an angel, he could go through the motions of eating the waffles, but only as a human could they truly EXPERIENCE those feelings directly.

Through everything that’s happened to him since 10.18, Cas has had this barrier of his grace blocking him from FEELING the humanity of it all. He’s got the advantage of experience to guide him through an intellectual understanding of this, and a memory of what it DOES feel like from a human perspective, and that certainly has played a role in guiding his actions. But he’s still struggling with those same essential questions posed by Metatron. The essential ones also posed to him back in 9.06– that yes he wants to live, but as what? An angel or a man?

The same one raised throughout his history going all the way back to his doubts about Heaven’s Plans way back in 4.07. His story has been slowly reconciling those doubts with his own exploration of humanity, dealing with his guilt and his choices going right through 12.23, when he’s finally done the maddest thing a man can do.

That’s not to say that Cas “let” himself die in 12.23, and we clearly don’t have a full understanding of everything that happened there yet, but we do know one thing. Cas still needs to answer those questions for himself.

Original tags:

  * spn s13 speculation 
  * spn 12.23 
  * castiel winchester 
  * i blame metadouche for everything including global warming and bee colony collapse 
  * are you an angel or a man castiel? (hint: he's no angel) 
  * i feel like i'm trying to convey far more than any amount of words can here and i'm failing horribly at it 
  * but i look at that string of episodes and see a very clear red thread connecting all of them 
  * but honestly i'm literally reduced to the embodiment of that image up there for lack of a more concise way to explain it all 
  * let me explain... no there is too much... let me sum up 
  * *points and flails at all the red string* 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * spn 10.18 
  * spn 10.19 
  * spn 10.20




	43. Chapter 43

[Aug 24, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164568969480/todays-jaunt-through-the-tnt-loop-hit-the-part-of)

22 notes

Today’s jaunt through the TNT loop hit the part of s11 that points the car toward the finish line and revs the engine. 11.15-11.18  (and really 11.14 is where it starts, but I watched that one yesterday, so it feels weird to include it in a post specifically about what I’m watching today… stupid brain refusing to organize itself more practically) takes the themes of the season spelled out in the triptych of 11.11, 11.12, and 11.13 and begins driving them home with purpose.

Amara and the Darkness hang like a metaphorical raincloud of escalating depression over this run of episodes, contrasted with the light and power of the Hands of God “weapons” that equally elude their grasp. The larger metaphorical and thematic struggle of the season plays out offscreen for the most part, since these two opposing fundamental forces of the universe– creation vs destruction, light vs darkness, order vs chaos (hello my old friends my s11 meta tags!)– are where the main a-plot action of the season is happening. We see that cosmic struggle through the lens of what TFW are struggling with.

As above, so below. Gabriel once referred to that concept (in 5.08) to explain why Sam and Dean were the “perfect vessels” for Michael and Lucifer. It’s the same concept as “the river shall end at its source,” as Metatron once said. And it’s[ the essential narrative structure of the entire series](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/160988290690/12-while-i-do-not-ask-this-to-be-negative-at)* as far as the individual character arcs are concerned. S11 is where this entire concept pivots around and shows us the pivot point– Dean Winchester, the firewall between light and darkness. Chuck and Amara both literally pointed at him as their exemplar, and in 11.23 he (armed with the power of Humanity) became the vehicle that finally united them both. Such is the power of the duality of humanity the show (and Dean specifically) has been wrestling with for years (hello entire MoC arc summed up in the themes of 10.11).

I know I’ve written about Dean’s descent into depression over the Cas-Lucifer situation, and there are hundreds of posts on my blog in the tags for these episodes detailing all of this already. But I can’t help it. Dammit, s11 let me love you.

in 11.15, we find Dean already packed to head out to The Hangman’s funeral. He’s concerned for Cas, but that concern hasn’t hit DESPERATION levels yet. He’s still rational, still hasn’t really come to grips with what they can do about Cas yet beyond being positive that Cas WANTS to be saved. He’s still at loose ends over his own confession about how incapable he feels in Amara’s presence, but is still confident that Sam is handling that end of the research for now.

11.16 escalates his growing depression and frustration at any lack of progress despite the “win” he’d had in 11.15 and the reaffirmation of the whole “keep grinding” theme. What they believe will be an easy vengeful spirit case turns out to hit very close to home, bringing them back to the comparable feeling of frustrated desperation of the apocalypse era by literally existing in both times at once via the Soul Eater’s nest. It may not have been the easy win Sam had hoped it would be, but it was still a necessary diversion that allowed them to set their own pasts (via saving Bobby from the Soul Eater) to rights. A major theme of s12, as well– rectifying their own past via Mary’s resurrection and personally coming to terms with their own legacy via the Men of Letters.

11.17 opens with Dean reaching a state of abject depression over their inability to gain any ground on either the hunt for Amara or a way to save Cas, and for the first time he drags his heels on taking on a case that Sam suggests could be a good distraction for them. Sam is clearly concerned for Dean, and despite Dean including Amara, Lucifer, and the Hands of God in the list of things they’re trying to handle, Sam narrows Dean’s reasons for wanting to hand this suspected case over to another hunt to one singular point:

**Dean** : All right, well, we make a call and we put somebody on it.  
 **Sam** : Yeah, but… [He sighs, closes his laptop and looks at Dean].  **We’ll get him back.**  
 **Dean** : How?  
 **Sam** : I… I don’t know. But we’ll figure it out. Meantime, we got to get out of here. Clear our heads. I mean, this is a case. Let’s do what we do. Let’s work it.

None of their other pressing concerns is weighing on Dean like Cas is. That one line is the foundation for the rest of the action in the entire episode. Poor dumb Corbin had no idea just how badly he underestimated Dean in forcing his hand by “killing” Sam, and selfishly using a rational mathematical argument to push Dean into walking away from his brother there. The underlying hesitation and depression Dean had been fighting through BECAUSE SAM HAD ASKED HIM TO HELP ON THIS CASE, because SAM had been trying to help get Dean out of his own head for a few days, essentially washed away when Corbin killed him.

When he finds Sam dead, Dean’s ready to give up everything. It had been SAM who’d kept him going, who’d given him a reason to “keep grinding.” Without Sam, Dean had lost hope for everything else.

It was Michelle who gave Dean a reason to keep fighting right there, and the walk through the woods to save her gave Dean enough time and space to reorganize his priorities. And it was Michelle again reminding him of Billie’s threat of the Empty that spurred him into desperate action yet again. It brought back the reminder that Dean was helpless to deal with Amara on his own, and that it was Sam that the fate of the entire universe was resting on.

And it was his chat with Billie there that finally taught him that the universe didn’t really care about fate… It gave him the push to begin fighting the depression and helplessness that was metaphorically the “thrall” Amara had over him.

11.18 is where Dean begins taking back the reins of his own fate. It’s also the first time he faces Amara and is able to ignore her completely, calling out for Cas instead. He’s begun to disconnect himself from the power she’s had over him since he took the Mark of Cain, because he chose something different. It’s also where we distinctly see the difference between Sam and Dean’s relationship with Cas, and the seeds are sown for expanding on that difference in s12.

**Sam** : I thought Lucifer had a shot. Apparently, uh, archangel plus God power doesn’t trump God’s sister.  
 **Dean** : But if the thing has to be used by God’s chosen, then maybe an archangel who got the boot doesn’t qualify. Either way, horn’s out of ammo, so…  
 **Sam** : So, back to square one.  
 **Dean** : Yep. [Sighing.]  
 **Sam** : Listen, um… I know I came down on the side of wanting Cas to deal with Amara, so…  
 **Dean** : Well, that’s what he wanted, though, right? Besides, didn’t we say that we were gonna swear off getting in the way when one person makes a choice the other doesn’t agree with?  
 **Sam** : Yeah, um… Yeah, we did say that.  
 **Dean** : So…  
 **Sam** : Okay. So, that’s our policy.  
 **Dean** : Which sounds damn good. [Sam chuckles.] Well, let’s go find that idiot and bring him home.

Yes, their policy is to honor the other’s choices, but Cas’s choice to say yes to Lucifer has played out. He thought Lucifer could defeat her, and Lucifer failed. Cas had been wrong, but that only reinforced Dean’s need to save him now. From what Crowley said about Cas being unreachable because of Lucifer’s control over him, Dean understood that Cas couldn’t just kick Lucifer out on his own, despite now having proof that Lucifer either lied about being able to defeat Amara or was just wrong about it. Cas’s “choice to say yes” hinged on that promise, and now that it was null and void, they could save Cas without wondering if it’s what he’d actually want.

It was heartbreaking for Dean to watch Amara zap Cas away, but it was actually the shot of hope he’d been needing– the certainty that he needed to intervene in any way he could to rescue Cas.

Okay, I guess that’s enough jibberjabber about stuff I’ve already talked about ad nauseum. :P

 

Original Tags: 

  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * spn 11.15 
  * spn 11.16 
  * spn 11.17 
  * spn 11.18 
  * the scheherazade of supernatural 
  * *mittens attempts to become one with the universe amid the sea of duality* 
  * order vs chaos and darkness vs light 
  * it's spirals all the way down 
  * and now the darkness 
  * this season's getting handsy 
  * here have my belated thoughts on the whole love... and love 
  * because why not maybe the lock and key are a function of hands and hearts 
  * holy crap it's fun to haul out all my s11 meta tags *makes out passionately with s11 meta tags*



*for the linked post, please see the next chapter


	44. Chapter 44

 

 

May 23, 2017

80 notes

**Anonymous asked: 1/2 (While i do NOT ask this to be negative at all, i realize it could be a controversial topic so feel free not to answer!) I have a friend who stopped watching SPN a few years ago after, according to her, they jumped the shark to the point she just couldn't take the show seriously anymore. Now, i'm so deep in fandom it's hard to step back and be objective, but that's not the first time i've heard that complaint, and it got me thinking; obviously i love the show.**

_2/2 But it did make me casually wonder what keeps me coming back to it specifically, because ibr if any other show had made some of the same writing, plot, etc. choices as SPN has, i’d diagnose it with a serious case of the trope “seasonal rot” and move on. But i haven’t. And i think it’s because SPN is SO character driven. Like, these characters make the show and the genuine heart and love shows through in the writing. I think that’s what balances out the at times questionable quality for me.  
_

Hi there. I just reblogged this post over here that mostly expresses my feelings about this:

<http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/160986841910/hey-i-stopped-watching-spn-like-during-season> (see chapter 45 for this post)

I think it’s really not accurate (nor fair) to describe the character growth and narrative progression as “seasonal rot.” I think that’s sincerely missing the point.

From a podcast interview with Davy Perez shortly after 12.04 aired (Not About The Weather, episode 8):

(Sorry, y’all, I started transcribing this two hour long interview, spent two days transcribing the first hour last November, got to 7.5k, and haven’t had a chance to finish… )

_N: It’s really interesting, because what you mentioned as well with Dean when he was living his sort of normal life with Lisa and Ben, it’s interesting as well because we’re six years on from that. So how do you look at that kind of thing and then go okay. How do you stop it being regressive, if you know what I mean? How do you go like, oh, he’s actually grown from that, or if he hasn’t or if he has. How do those decisions get made?_

_DP: For me I think it’s funny because I might have read it in a book somewhere, or maybe it was advice I got, in regards to writing television versus writing film. When you’re writing a film, you’re writing what is hopefully a complete journey, where a character gets called to action, where they go on their journey of discovery or their journey of tribulation, and then they arrive to an end point and you find, “Oh, I’ve learned this lesson,” or “I’ve grown so much.” And that was a satisfying, closed-ended story. Television doesn’t work that way. Television is about a character that you become invested in, and that you fall in love with. That character grows in incremental ways. Not only do they grow in tiny little increments, and sometimes don’t even grow, they go backwards. You don’t close the loop. You keep the loop open, so that hopefully when you know that okay, this is our final season, this is our final run of episodes, that’s when you can find those landing points, and that’s when you can sort of say this is the end of this journey.  
As far as having to imagine what Dean might be eight years ago, well all I can say is that’s who Dean is. There’s a well of knowledge to watch, and you can see that that’s who he is. Maybe they’ve grown in some small way. Maybe Sam can talk about the psychic stuff where maybe before he didn’t even want to talk about it, but he’s not a completely different Sam in that he’s learned from his mistakes and will never make the mistakes again.  **You want to make sure that you’re staying true to who they are, and allowing the characters to just live in those moments, and to of course grow and have that journey, but to really take time. In an essence you really enjoy those incremental growths and they mean so much more.**_

This is exactly what I’ve described as the “spiral narrative” where the same things come up over and over again, putting the characters in similar situations. But this has become a character-driven narrative. The mytharc is entirely secondary to what the characters are going through.

Playing “spot the difference” each time you see a “wait, that’s really familiar” moment is where you really SEE those incremental growths. This is not “seasonal rot.” I find myself irrationally offended on behalf of the writers here… like, got up and stormed around the house ranting out loud to myself.

So when meta writers talk about how the writers are doing all of this intentionally, we literally really truly do mean the writers are DOING THIS ALL INTENTIONALLY. They have even TOLD US THIS IS THE CASE IN ACTUAL WORDS.

I  wrote a thing recently that sort of touches on this a bit, that started out as a reply about character driven vs plot driven narratives, but I think it also goes a little way toward explaining some of the reasons why people are having difficulty understanding what the show is doing now:

<http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/159511693805/a-very-random-question-but-in-your-opinion-whats> (see chapter 46 for this post)

If folks are still looking at the show as if it was actually a plot-driven narrative, there’s bound to be some sincere disappointment. But if you see it as a character-driven narrative, everything begins falling into place. I don’t mean to say that someone might be “watching wrong,” but if your impression is that the narrative is inconsistent and has made questionable plot choices, then I feel at least slightly obligated to politely suggest maybe watching it from THIS perspective and see if the entire picture doesn’t become perfectly clear.

[Like this sculpture illustrates](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fperceptualart.com%2F&t=NGQ2N2NmODAxZGU0MjQ1ZDIxMDVhMjZjZTk4YzFiMDM3NjEzMzExOSxlWmVnb0l0Sw%3D%3D&b=t%3AgQ2jjt29OviG-kJJpyAysQ&p=http%3A%2F%2Fmittensmorgul.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F160988290690%2F12-while-i-do-not-ask-this-to-be-negative-at&m=1), look at it from the wrong angle and it all seems random. It’s supposed to inspire you to walk around looking at it all from DIFFERENT angles until the entire picture clicks into place.

This is the amazing beauty of the story Supernatural is telling us right now. I just want as many people as possible to realize this, because I think a lot of people right now are just seeing the random scattershot dots and feeling like they aren’t telling us a full story… I’m just trying to drag as many people around to the other side, to see what it looks like from where I’m sitting. Because it looks like art to me.

 

 

 

 

 Original tags:

  * spn meta meta 
  * Anonymous



For the first linked post, please see chapter 45, for the second linked post please see chapter 46.


	45. Chapter 45

May 23, 2017

210 notes

**Anonymous asked: Hey, I stopped watching SPN like. During season 10. And I've just been seeing posts from your blog and a couple other SPN blogs about what's been going on (in a loose sense). It really seems like SPN jumped the shark quite a few times (too many times for me which is why I stopped watching; it was just too exhausting to keep up with?). I'm interested in maybe giving it another try. Could you tell me why you still follow SPN? What do the most recent seasons have that has kept you watching?**

[obsessionisaperfume](http://obsessionisaperfume.tumblr.com/post/160973046882/hey-i-stopped-watching-spn-like-during-season):

> [rachelhaimowitz](http://rachelhaimowitz.tumblr.com/post/160970247806/hey-i-stopped-watching-spn-like-during-season):
>
>> [winjennster](https://winjennster.tumblr.com/post/160969587979/hey-i-stopped-watching-spn-like-during-season):
>>
>>> [rachelhaimowitz](http://rachelhaimowitz.tumblr.com/post/160969468856/hey-i-stopped-watching-spn-like-during-season):
>>>
>>>> So for me, I watch SPN first and foremost for the characters, and for that reason I don’t think it really matters where the plot goes as long as Sam, Dean, and Cas are still on the show and still being treated with at least reasonable quantities of respect. 
>>>> 
>>>> Obviously SPN is made by a LOT of people and so there is no single monolith handling of their characters, but by and large unless it’s a Bucklemming episode (which I think fandom has all just collectively agreed to pretend don’t exist), I think all the writers do justice to my boys.
>>>> 
>>>> Personally–and I’m saying this as someone whose profession is telling stories and helping other people tell stories–Dean Winchester is one of the most interesting, compelling, complex characters ever to exist. Cas is a close second. (I adore Sam to pieces but I think his characterization is less layered, by and large, and consequently less compelling to me personally.) And watching the boys make their slow, painful journeys to self-acceptance has been absolutely magnificent to watch. Especially this season, where we’ve seen a culmination (though I think there will absolutely be some backsliding in future season) of Dean’s deconstruction of Performing Dean (his hypermasculine, womanizing, hard-drinking, badass, stay-strong-for-Sammy face) via his realizations that he’s entitled to Want Things For Himself, that he doesn’t have to live only for other people, that his life has value outside of what he can do for Sam and the people he saves, that it’s okay to like what he likes even if that’s pink panties and chick flicks. And holy shit that journey was beautiful. And I’m just … I’m  _so here_ for that.
>>>> 
>>>> Cas is on a similar journey, but he’s still deep in his lowest point, and in the next season it’s very clear we’re going to get to watch him climb out of that and come out the other side a much stronger, more confident person who comes to realize his own self worth and his capacity to love and be loved. And I am  _so here_ for that too.
>>>> 
>>>> Sam’s already gone through a ton of character growth, but I’d bet money that the both the nephilim and the alternate world storylines are going to help him solidify the idea that he isn’t dirty and he wasn’t born evil and that he doesn’t need to purify himself or keep doing selfless good to offset the bad. 
>>>> 
>>>> So, yeah. I wouldn’t say that I don’t care about the mytharcs, because that’s not true (I mean HOLY SHIT SEASONS 4 AND 5 WERE SOOOOO GOOD), but at the same time, I’m willing to forgive a lot of sloppy mytharc (s6 and s7, anyone?) if it means we get to keep unpeeling the layers on our boys (again, s6 and s7 anyone?). 
>>> 
>>> Like for real, I’m so in love with Sam, Dean, and Cas that I really couldn’t give a shit about mytharc anymore? Like I want to see what they’re doing, how they’re developing. Like I dream of an episode that’s just a fucking day in the bunker. Sam doing his thing, researching and organizing the library, maybe answering calls from other hunters. Cas is learning how to knit, discovering that he loves lounging in a hot bath for hours and reading Dean’s beloved Vonnegut and Tolkien, and Dean just cleaning and cooking and working on his baby and just being so fucking happy because Sam and Cas are alive and well.   
>   
> Fuck mytharc. Give me character arcs instead.
>> 
>> YES, and see, that’s another reason I’m still watching that I neglected to touch on in my original answer: I want to learn who Sam even  _is_. Like, we know a bazillion things that Dean likes, that make Dean happy, the music he listens to, the books he reads in his spare time, the TV he watches, the hobbies he pursues, the food he loves.
>> 
>> But Sam? All we really know is that he loves learning/research, works out, and eats a lot of salads (and the working out and salads probably has nothing to do with loving them and everything to do with food and exercise being one thing in his life he can definitively  _control_ , a way to be the master of his own body–which has been controlled far too often in the past–and also it’s “purifying”). In broader strokes, we know he’s absolutely fucking  _ruthless_ when pushed, but also has a heart the size of a planet. That’s … not a lot to know about a dude we’ve been watching for twelve years.
>> 
>> I wanna know Sam’s music, Sam’s favorite fiction, Sam’s favorite TV, Sam’s hobbies that he does for love instead of obligation or fear or purity or control or whatever other not-fun reason. I’m so eager to dig below the surface of Sam like we’ve spent literally twelve seasons digging below the surface of Dean.
>> 
>> And yeah man I’m also  _so here_ for Cas discovering all the things in human life that bring him joy. Also discovering things he doesn’t like, because that’s equally important when it comes to asserting himself and valuing himself. I wanna see him take a bite of food that he  _hates_  and try to figure out if it’s okay to spit it into a napkin or if just soldiers through it and chews and swallows as fast as he can. I want to see him tell Dean,  _Can we change the channel please this show sucks._ I want so much for all of them, but for Cas and Sam in particular, they still have so much work to do discovering what brings them joy.
> 
> Me, I got into the show because of Jensen, and as long as he’s here, I’m here. I knew he would make me love Dean, but I really wasn’t prepared for how much I got to love the other characters. (GIVE ME BACK MY BOBBY SINGER YOU SON OF A BITCH).  
>   
> I really hope we get a lot of insight into Sam in season 13, because he’s such a mystery.   
>   
> Another thing that keeps me tuning in is the amount of storytelling Show does in the background, in the costumes and props and wardrobe, the editing and music choices. There aren’t many shows out there on network tv that have as many layers of story as SPN does, and I LOVE the way those details enrich the story.

This show has always used the mytharc and the character arcs in tandem to tell a grand story, but in long past years it was the mytharc that carried the narrative. That’s… not the case anymore. It’s flipped, and now the character arcs are where the “real story” is happening. And THIS is why I love this show.

After your main characters reunite God and the Darkness and Dr. Phil the entire universe into balance, there was just no way to make the mytharc “bigger.” They spent 12 years making us love these characters, and now they are making the characters themselves into the central plot. Everything happening around them, no matter how epic in scale, feels secondary to what Sam, Dean, and Cas are experiencing on a personal level.

And that’s just brilliant. They’ve flipped EVERYTHING around.


	46. Chapter 46

Apr 12, 2017

85 notes

**[rionaofblue](http://rionaofblue.tumblr.com/) asked: A very random question but in your opinion, what's the difference between plot-drive and character-driven stories?**

I’ve been staring at this message in my inbox for days now, and on top of being a long-debated question regarding writing in general, I think it’s also incredibly relevant to the structure of Supernatural specifically. And because of that I’ve been half excited about and yet half dreading trying to answer this.

Not dreading in a bad way, but dreading because I know this is gonna turn into some kind of patented Mittens Uses Too Many Words To Say The Thing sort of post. Because I have FEELINGS about this. :P

Let’s start with the basics, and I’ll explain why this is a much debated thing. Seriously, just google “plot vs character driven writing” and each link you click will offer a different assessment of what this means. I mean, just speaking about Romance novels as a specific, some people would characterize them as “plot driven” and others as “character driven,” depending on your understanding of what is meant by those terms. It’s… confusing.

Because a character driven story is one which obviously HAS a plot which advances throughout the story, but it’s the character’s emotions and choices and personal growth that DRIVE the plot forward.

A plot driven story is one in which the character may also experience emotional growth and make choices and everything, but in reaction to an external plot that draws the character along in its wake.

All stories incorporate both character and plot development (hopefully! or otherwise why would we bother reading them. This reminds me of my favorite English teacher who taught a class called Literature of Changing Times. I think I’ve mentioned her before *waves hi at Mrs. Proenza if you’re out there reading this. You are awesome, btw*. First day of class when we were going over the reading list, she said, “Ha! Jokes on the admins for approving this class, because ALL literature is about changing times, and this just gives me an excuse to teach y’all my favorite books!”

That was an awesome class, because it was obvious how much she loved every book we studied, and it definitely carried through in OUR enthusiasm for the subject. She basically was the one who taught me how to be passionate about stories.)

So yes, all writing will have elements of a plot moving forward, and characters who are hopefully relatable and whose motivations we understand and/or sympathize with, and sometimes it’s hard to tell if a story is more driven by the external plot or the internal character motivations because both seem important.

Now, specifically relating to Supernatural. Taken as a whole, the series has used both character driven AND plot driven stories, sometimes simultaneously. I’ve heard one description in an old meta ages and ages ago that SPN was actually telling us two different stories based on whether you were looking at it through Sam’s perspective or Dean’s.

Short tangent to explain: Sam’s story has largely been plot driven, and that meta I mentioned above compared it to the traditional story structure of the Horror genre. An external force acts on a character, the character is forced to react, make choices based on those outside influences, and thus growth and change happens for the character. Dean’s story (aside from during the MoC arc, when Dean was literally acted on by an outside force) has largely been character driven, similar to a character in a traditional Fantasy genre story where the character is the one who goes chasing after the plot, and his emotions and choices drive that plot forward.

But it’s more complicated than that, because of course it is. :P

Obviously that’s reducing things to their absolute simplest form, but Sam’s narrative began when an outside force literally acted on him, with Azazel dripping demon blood in his mouth. That obviously drove the plot forward, setting up everything that’s happened in the entire series in the opening scenes of the pilot episode.

But Dean’s story really begins (again, in the pilot episode) because he has an emotional need for Sam to help him find their father. That ALSO drives the action of the story forward, because without Dean’s internal motivation, the rest of the plot wouldn’t have happened, either.

Using the Carver Era (s8-11), you can really see the difference between a character driven narrative and a plot driven one. See by my personal bias in the following description if you can tell which style of storytelling I personally prefer:

Early s8 began with a HUGE dose of character driven plots. Dean comes back from Purgatory without Cas and is basically pining or in mourning. Sam’s been on an extended vacation playing house with Amelia. Dean’s internal drive to “fix the plot,” i.e. find and save Kevin, drives the early part of the season while Sam feels a little resentful of being dragged away from his “normal” life.

Then Cas miraculously turns up, they find Kevin, and suddenly they’re learning about  _other_  tablets that exist in the world. In a plot-driven world, they would’ve sought out the tablets and probably destroyed them. They wouldn’t start making these huge universe-altering decisions based on the information they learn from Kevin Tran, Prophet of Chuck.

The whole Trials storyline begins as a character-driven story. It’s their united motivations (Sam and Dean), their internal desire to accomplish this thing, that gets the ball rolling. And Dean intends to be the one to carry this burden of the trials, until fate hands that burden to Sam. Once again, outside forces have turned the course of the story. So Sam is the one who again must react TO the plot. Dean spends most of the rest of s8 reacting to Sam’s reactions, supporting him through the trials, but also emotionally attaching himself to Castiel’s story.

Cas spent most of s8 in a similar narrative position to Sam, except he didn’t even realize it. He believed he was acting on his own emotional choices much of the time (turning off Angel Radio, deciding to be a hunter, and then deciding to reconnect in order to answer prayers– we see him healing a baby and generally trying to do good in the world). Yet all along, he’s being acted on by outside forces and is literally being mind-controlled. So he believed he was driving his own plot, when behind the scenes his plot was being driven for him.

At the beginning of s9, Sam is again put into a situation much like Cas’s during s8 where he BELIEVES he’s in charge of his story, while unbeknownst to him he’s actually got an angel in the driver’s seat. Sam’s being dragged along by that plot again. But it was Dean’s internal motivation that directly put him in that situation.

Finally it’s Dean’s turn to make a choice that leads to a self-sacrifice he believes is the only way to regain control of the plot (Abaddon! Must! Die!), and takes on the Mark of Cain without reading the fine print. Thus begins what we BELIEVE is an internally motivated story for Dean, because for A FREAKING YEAR the show was telling us through parallels and the narrative itself that the Mark was a curse and what we were seeing was a change INTERNAL TO DEAN. Heck, it literally turned him into a demon. He wasn’t POSSESSED by the demon, it wasn’t an outside force acting on him, it was his very own most internal soul that had been transformed.

And then round about 10.15 the narrative pulled a 180, yanked the rug out from under a year’s worth of narrative buildup of an intensely INTERNALIZED (i.e. CHARACTER DRIVEN) story for Dean and said WHOOPSIE NOPE IT’S ACTUALLY AN OUTSIDE FORCE CONTROLLING DEAN! You thought he was actually growing as a character but nope we’re taking this one step below Fuckhands McMike territory and blaming EVERYTHING that’s happened on this big scary Dark external force! The plot basically pantsed us all.

Suddenly, after two and a half years of mostly character-driven storytelling, everything shifts and everyone’s chasing after the plot again. Dean loses ALL control over the thing inside him as he’s hopelessly dragged off by the Darkness.

And then in 10.23, Dean wrests control back over his own story by literally killing Death, while Sam and Cas have set events in motion that free Dean from the Mark of Cain and release it into the world at large instead.

Now obviously a huge portion of s11 is plot driven– their reactions to having released the Darkness and their scramble to fix what they broke as it spreads across the land. But even from the start of the season, the narrative gradually shifts into a nice balance between plot and character driven stories, where the two really begin to merge together (even on a subtextual meta level).

Another interesting aspect of Supernatural is the two types of episodes– the Mytharc (which are largely plot-driven) and the MotW (which are usually one-off monster hunts with an internal plot driven structure– MUST SOLVE THE CASE AND SAVE THE PEOPLE AND KILL THE THING!– but are generally propelled by a spurt of introspection and character growth. These are the episodes where they aren’t just acting and reacting to the Big Plot Things, but actually experience growth and change themselves).

And this is why I LOVE s12. It’s almost entirely character driven, even with the overarching plots. The main focus isn’t so much the motives of the Bad Guys and our Intrepid Heroes trying to save the world from them. It’s about the characters own personal emotional growth, how their choices affect the narrative (and yes, even Sam’s choice to work with the MoL is really a CHOICE and not something he was compelled by the plot to choose. His personal internal desires led him to that choice, and are now leading him AWAY from that choice, but it’s still been a real choice for him. Same with Cas and the choices he’s been making, and even CROWLEY, in choosing not to lock up Lucifer properly (or just kill him already ffs).

Dean is at the center of all of this, acting as that strange force of balance he’d achieved in 11.23. He’s not so much driving the story with his emotional choices, but sitting at a weird central axis while the story takes place all around him. He’s pulling a string here and there and waiting to see what budges.

I LOVE THIS. It’s glorious chaos, and I feel like Dean, sitting all zen-like in the middle of a huge unraveling sweater.

Okay, I confess. I don’t necessarily prefer one style of storytelling over the other (though I am a Dean girl, so I guess I probably do prefer a character driven story… and even Cas’s story has long been about his acquisition and proper application of Free Will, learning about humanity and making choices for himself, so while he’s experienced huge swaths of character development and growth it’s not entirely been character driven growth…). And I adore Supernatural’s complicated blend of the two.

I just really hated the bait and switch of late s10. You know that gif of Bart Simpson where he’s playing the video frame by frame and says something like, “you can pinpoint the exact second his heart rips in half?” Yeah. it’s like in 10.15 there’s a record scratch and suddenly we’re watching the freaking Stynes grab the plot by the short and curlies and yanking it in an entirely unforeseen direction. Like, out of left field. Like they picked up Baby off a coastal highway and plonked her down in a muddy field to spin her wheels, jarring. That’s what they did with the narrative.

After 10.23, once the plot had been suitably yanked around where they wanted it, the narrative structure AND the plot itself became about finding another way, a better way, a balanced and unified way. And since then it’s largely stayed on track.

How did I turn a simple question into this? It’s who I am as a person. I hope that’s okay. :P

 

Original tags: 

  * posts about writing stuff 
  * this is how stories work 
  * and sometimes how they DON'T work
  * narrative structure 
  * writing is hard 
  * that's my general tag 
  * carver era 
  * I am SO GLAD that Dabb favors a more character driven approach though 
  * kajuned




	47. Chapter 47

 

[Aug 25, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164620631940/so-the-tnt-loop-stopped-at-1122-today-will-show)

 

81 notes

So the TNT loop stopped at 11.22 today, will show 11.23 first thing Monday, and then loop directly back to the pilot. Whoa.

So me being me, I watched 11.23 this afternoon, and am now bingewatching all of s12 this weekend. I have Thoughts™ about early s12. I mean, I don’t have any thoughts I haven’t had before, but up until now I hadn’t done a complete s12 rewatch, finally having seen the entire season. Yeah, I watched each episode at least three or four times (except that one… you know the one… with the scream-worthy time travel that made zero sense…). And I watched 12.01-8 again right before the winter hellatus ended to feel current…

But whoa the themes surrounding Mary, and Dean, and Sam, and Cas… they’re all there right from the start. In the first three episodes it’s impossible to miss how much like Dean Mary really is, how terrified she is to face Sam because of the guilt she feels over everything that happened to him. Meanwhile Sam has come to terms with all of that years ago, proven by his conversation with Magda.

Dean feels Mary’s need to leave as a failure on HIS part, while Sam sympathizes with her needing some time and space (because heck HE needed that once upon a time too), but he’s completely in the dark about that guilt she feels OVER WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM.

Which Dean internalizes instead. I mean, like mother, like son. And it takes until 12.22 for Dean to say it out loud, that when she died HE had to become the mother to Sam, as well as the father. Because John wasn’t that “great dad” that Mary remembered and had believed in. But she couldn’t face that, she couldn’t deal with that guilt of not being able to protect her boys from that life, and from her deal having thrust them right into the middle of it. Like Dean rushing to sell his soul to save Sam, or insisting that HE should do the trials instead of Sam, or taking on the Mark of Cain without reading the fine print, Mary ran headlong into the BMoL. She couldn’t keep them out of hunting, but maybe if she killed all the monsters herself they’d never need to hunt again. They’d never be in danger again. It’s irrational, but fueled by her guilt and grief, and her inability to see through that to the men her boys grew into. Men who have entire lives she can barely comprehend. Men who don’t blame her for any of it. Who’d rather have her in their lives than have her sacrifice herself for them. Again.

And throughout the season, that’s the same lesson Cas is struggling to internalize himself. He feels guilty that Lucifer is free again, feels it’s his duty to clean up that mess, and feels like now that Mary is back he might not be quite so welcome as a part of the Winchester family. Like maybe they don’t really need him as much now that they have their mother back. It’s essentially what he tells both Dean and Mary before he leaves in 12.03.

But that, of course, changes as he comes to terms with his past, present, and he gets a glimpse of his future… a future built on a deception, that led directly to his death (and transformation, which we know is coming in s13). But the guilt that drove Mary to the BMoL was paralleled to the guilt that drove Cas to collude with Heaven and steal the Colt in 12.19– and a desire to spare Dean and Sam from terrible things.

Okay I’ll probably have more to say on all of this (basically I’m only resorting to typing it all out as a post because Lizbob went to sleep and I have to type it all at SOMEBODY), but this is nothing new. Just sorta… condensed… watching the whole season in one go like this. :P

 Additional commentary from Lizbob, and reply by me:

> Wait wait wait just because I was “asleep” and “not online” you thought it was okay to post this and rush past the bit where you come up with the massive revelation that Dean internalised the guilt about Mary leaving this time on Sam’s behalf just like 12x2 proved he’d internalised everything that happened to Sam on his behalf and and -
> 
> *goes back to bed*

OH gosh I did that didn’t I… Poor Dean. *tucks self under blanket pile*

Honestly all of this only got worse after I watched 12.06 again this morning, with Mary internalizing the guilt over everything that happened in Asa’s life because she’d  _saved_ his life, and sort of glossing over the point that his life would’ve ended in 1980 if she hadn’t done that in the first place…

Yet the fact that he’d grown up to become a hunter himself– and hadn’t lived up to his mother’s hopes and dreams for him (to become an astronaut, to settle down and have a wife and children)– was entirely her fault, even though he wouldn’t have had any life at all without her having saved him. Because of his mother’s bitterness over his life-long obsession with Mary and with hunting and monsters, Mary internalized that guilt herself.

But honestly what could she have done differently? She gave Asa a chance at life, and he made his own choices about what to do with that life. Not to mention the fact that Mary herself had literally been dead for most of it. How can she possibly be held responsible for what happened afterward?

But just as easily as Asa raised Mary up on a pedestal (like Dean did), Mary took that burden of guilt on herself (just as she did regarding how Sam and Dean’s lives turned out after her death). She couldn’t bring herself to face them until she could “make things right” to her way of thinking.

I just finished 12.07, and this is all reflected in Sam’s version of this internalization (which is directly tied in to Cas’s version of it), over Lucifer:

 **Sam** :  I mean, how many people died tonight? Them, this, it’s all on us. We let him out. We’re not winning. We’re just losing slow. And you heard what he said-  
 **Crowley:**  Onwards and upwards. He’s gone big.  
 **Castiel:**  And he’ll go bigger.  
 **Dean:**  And we’ll stop him. We will. It’s what we do, man.

Each of them has had major themes of guilt to this effect in s12.

 

 

 

Original tags:

  * spn s12 
  * spn 12.01 
  * spn 12.02 
  * spn 12.03 
  * spn 12.04 
  * spn 12.05 
  * spn 12.19 
  * spn 12.22 
  * spn 12.23 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * winchester family dynamics 
  * mary f. winchester
  * castiel winchester
  *  oh dean 
  * sam fucking winchester
  * parallels 
  * basically just me rambling about the narrative while feeling baffled by folks who think s12 was crap or poorly structured or whatever




	48. Chapter 48

[Aug 26, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164643240670/rewatching-1209-feeling-that-guilt-pile-up-on)

21 notes

Rewatching 12.09, feeling that guilt pile up on both Mary and Cas:

**Mary:** You left them.  
 **Castiel:**  No, I… Dean told me to go, the woman-  
 **Mary:**  The one you lost?  
 **Castiel:**  I didn’t. I… I thought that she-  
 **Mary:**  Stop making excuses! Why… if they needed help, why didn’t they call me?  
 **Castiel:** You were out.

and then

**Castiel:**  I saw it on the news and I thought, that’s the sort of thing Sam and Dean would investigate. They would roll into town, save the day, kill the monsters. But with them gone… I tried to work the case. I tried. But… I don’t know what I did wrong. I… I asked questions, but maybe they were the wrong people or the wrong questions, and I just… I never found it. Never found the monster. Never even got close. And three more women died before I left town. Before I ran away.

Cas becomes essentially so despondent and bereft without the Winchesters that he spirals into a bleaker sort of state even than he was in during his early s11 Netflix binge. He’s so terrified of failing again when Dean finally does call him that he calls in both Mary AND the BMoL for backup. He’s lost all trust in himself.

But this is the point where Castiel and Mary’s parallel begins to diverge. At the end of this episode, Cas is reaffirmed in his resolve to the Winchesters as his family, while Mary is lured by the picture the BMoL have painted for her of a world without monsters. The temporary sacrifice of her relationship with her family, the sacrifice of HERSELF into making the world “safe” for her sons, is what eventually leads to her near-downfall…

 

Original tags: 

  * spn 12.09 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch




	49. Chapter 49

[Aug 26, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164643855755/what-do-you-think-of-dean-saying-that-solitary)

40 notes

**Anonymous asked: What do you think of Dean saying that solitary confinement was worse than Hell? I love spn, but the one thing I could never really get over was Dean being in Hell for 40 years. Thats longer than anything he's ever done. I have a hard time believing that a person wouldn't just dissolve into nothing after experiencing that, even Dean. I actually have a headcanon that when Cas rescued Dean, he used part of his Grace to significantly mend Dean's soul, so the impact wasn't nearly so dramatic.**

[mittensmorgul](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164599248665/what-do-you-think-of-dean-saying-that-solitary):

> I’ve actually got a post from back in February titled “[Worse than Hell](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/156728955875/worse-than-hell).”
> 
> But beyond that, your headcanon here that Cas used part of his grace to mend Dean’s soul is a pretty common theory, especially in fanfic. It’s often used to explain the handprint (see all my handprint meta tags ever, there’s at least three or four of them, or just search my blog for “handprint.” there’s a lot of posts on the subject).
> 
> We also know what Hell does to souls. It literally is what turns them into demons. How far along in the process must Dean have been when Cas rescued him? He’d been tortured for 30 years, and become the torturer for 10. That HAD to cause at least a little damage to Dean’s soul, by the rules of Hell. Yet when Cas returned him to his miraculously perfectly healed body (and I’m pretty sure this was the entire point of the scene in the gas station mirror where Dean examines himself, lifts up his shirt, etc., that it took something extremely powerful to restore his physical body, but also his soul that we couldn’t see).
> 
> So yes, a person WOULD just dissolve in Hell, but not into “nothing.” Specifically into demons. And as we know about demons, quoting Cas in 10.03 when he was explaining to Sam why Dean would resist being cured, “You know, only humans can feel real joy, but … also such profound pain. This is easier.” So after a point in Hell, when a soul becomes a demon, it likely gets easier. Hence Dean’s comment to Sam back in s4. Not only did he become the torturer,  _he liked it_. Now that his soul had been restored,  _it upset him that he liked it_. Just like he was “embarrassed” by the things he did during his time as a demon in early s10 once he was cured, you know? Possibly similar to how Sam was horrified upon learning about some of the things he did while soulless after his soul was restored to him.
> 
> So the bit about it being Cas’s grace that was the healing factor there is logical (again, see the vast collection of handprint meta on my blog for everything from enraptured squee-flailing over the headcannony sorts of posts, and well-reasoned and logical theories connecting the handprint to the mark left on Aaron Birch’s soul when he sold it to Balthazar in 6.03, to pretty much everything I’ve ever written on angels, souls, the nature of angel grace, etc. I’ve spent five years thinking about this in quite excruciating detail… >.>)
> 
> (here have a post where I collected my handprint tags for easy reference: <http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/157167169475/i-dont-know-if-this-interests-you-but-its>) (AN: I will be doing an entire collection on AO3 of the posts at this link)
> 
> So I think Dean does have a full recollection of the horrors of what Hell did to him, probably even compounded by his fresh recollection of his time as a literal demon, you know? I don’t think those memories got a fuzzy sort of glow or were tempered into something softer by Cas healing him of that trauma. Part of the point of him going through all of that was to fulfill the prophecy of the apocalypse and prepare him to say Yes to Michael, after all. It would’ve been pointless if he didn’t understand the suffering of souls in Hell. It was supposed to be part of his motivation to let Michael in to defeat Lucifer.
> 
> tl;dr: I think Dean fully understood the comparison he was making there. Being isolated for potentially the rest of his natural life, locked in a small concrete box, with  _no point of any kind to that isolation and suffering_ , was worse than Hell. At least the suffering he endured in Hell had a point. It was a willing sacrifice on his part (as I said in that linked post at the top of this rambling reply). :P

 

Gah, okay, so I’m rewatching this scene right now, and I think it’s also at least a little bit to do with Dean having a gooey center made of abandonment issues and a need to feel… needed.

I’ve said this before, but locked in that concrete box with nothing, no role to play, nobody to save, nothing to do at all besides run through the pre-recorded script in his own mind (that obviously includes the horrors of hell, his time as a demon, and every other horrifying thing that’s ever happened to him), with nothing and nobody to distract himself from that internal monologue, no hope of any sort of human contact outside of the thrice daily CHOW TIME. When it comes to torture, there’s very little that’s quite as effective against someone like Dean than something like that.

We saw him laugh off Toni Bevell’s theories of pain in 12.02. We know he’s probably the most accomplished torturer on the planet. But the only thing he had inside that concrete box was  _himself_. And to Dean, that’s the worst torture imaginable.

Okay. Sorry. *mittens repents for sharing out her own self-torture on y’all but heck I gotta or I’ll just be here inside my own concrete box self-flagellating like Dean was and I can’t have that for obvious reasons*

 

Original tags:

  * torture
  * oh DEAN 
  * spn 12.09 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch



 


	50. Chapter 50

[Aug 26, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164653758690/watching-1211-and-suffering-ive-already-written)

32 notes

Watching 12.11 and suffering.

I’ve already written all the relevant comments I want to write about it, aside from the fact that it honestly makes me believe that Rowena has a future role to play in the show…

but aside from that it’s just suffering.

When Sam had to inform him earlier that monsters were real and they killed them, Dean’s reaction was “Awesome!” When Rowena tells him he’s a killer, he’s distressed, but at least she clarifies that he does it for the greater good…

By the end he doesn’t even remember how to speak, yet still figures out what he needs to do– kill the witch.

Dean gets told by a lot of people in s12 that he’s a killer, but there’s shades of nuance there. Dean knows what kind of killer he is– it’s for the greater good. And he knows he’s good at it, it’s what he does, but even more it’s who he is.

*gets distracted watching Dean ride Larry*

 

Original tags 

  * spn 12.11 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch




	51. Chapter 51

[Aug 26, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164654144085/interesting-that-its-100-clear-that-mary-knows)

44 notes

Interesting that it’s 100% clear that Mary knows about Lucifer’s nephilim-to-be in 12.09, it’s reconfirmed in 12.12 that she’s in the know when Wally reacts disbelievingly when Dean asks Cas about how his hunt for Lucifer’s kid is going. And we know Mary is already working for the BMoL on this case, using their intel and even handing over magical weapons (that she believes are nonfunctional, but still…), and yet she never shared the intel that she had first-hand info about Lucifer’s nephilim with the BMoL, because Mick thought he was bringing the Winchesters a bombshell with that small fact in 12.17.

I think that was the moment Mick realized he’d  _seriously_  underestimated the Winchesters…

 

Original tags: 

  * spn 12.09 
  * spn 12.12 
  * spn 12.17 
  * s12 hellatus rewatch 
  * men of letters vs hunters




	52. Chapter 52

[Aug 26, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164656526315/let-me-just-share-that-feeling-the-full-weight-of)

30 notes

Let me just share that feeling the full weight of the heartwrenching angst of 12.12, knowing how it essentially reaffirm’s Cas’s need to keep Sam and Dean safe (and why he deliberately keeps himself at arm’s length for most of the rest of the season), because he loves them and they’re his family, and knowing them has been the best part of his life (and that’s fucking saying something powerful for a billions-of-years-old angel), and they’ve  _changed_  him, and he’d do literally anything to keep them out of this fresh horror that he feels personally (if indirectly) responsible for. He’d do anything to spare them from having to kill an innocent, or be endangered by yet another Prince of Hell…

And MARY witnessing all of this firsthand, and also doubling down on her desire to make the world safe for her boys, who’ve had such a profound effect on an ANGEL that he’d say these things about them, and willingly sacrifice his life for them… BUT WHO SAM AND DEAN HAD BEEN EQUALLY WILLING TO SACRIFICE THEIR OWN LIVES FOR. WHO CALLED CAS THEIR FAMILY AND PROVED IT WITH ACTIONS. POTENTIALLY LIFE-ENDING ACTIONS. Instead of understanding that ridding the world of monsters entirely was ever a good idea, and still lacking a VAST knowledge and understanding of her son’s lives, proven by the fact that she STILL handed over the Colt to the BMoL and kept that entire thing secret… Trying to atone for her lingering guilt without having to face her sons until she can do so with a “win” in hand…

After all of that, to go right into whateverthefuck 12.13 is is practically insulting. Sorry.

*fast forwards* *fast forwards some more*

 

 

[spn 12.12](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-12.12) [spn 12.13](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-12.13) [s12 hellatus rewatch](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/s12-hellatus-rewatch) [i was suffering in a good way but now i'm just suffering in a bad way ffs](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/i-was-suffering-in-a-good-way-but-now-i%27m-just-suffering-in-a-bad-way-ffs)


	53. Chapter 53

 [Aug 26, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164658302430/mary-in-1214-on-why-shes-working-with-the-bmol)

23 notes

Mary in 12.14, on why she’s working with the BMoL instead of with her family: I’m doing this for you. I’m playing three decades of catch up here.

Cas in 12.19, on why he’s working with Heaven instead of with his family:  And I just wanted… I needed to come back here with a win for you. For myself.

and

This has nothing to do with my reputation. I am doing this for the Winchesters. I-I stole the Colt to keep them out of this mission and to keep them safe from Dagon, and I… I will kill this girl so that Sam and Dean don’t have to. 

* * *

Then the fact that Sam was the first one willing to forgive Mary for this betrayal, because his personal baggage with Mary is so very different from Dean’s. Sam is of course more willing to hear her out, to give her a chance, because going all the way back to 12.02, this has been his mindset in dealing with Mary’s sudden appearance in his life:

 **Sam:**  Well, this is my family. My family hunts, you know? It’s is what we do. Mom, for me… Just, um… having you here… fills in the biggest blank.

Having her there at all fills in the blank that had been her entire existence for Sam for his whole life. He’s willing to take her as she is, without either Dean’s preconceived notions and memories of her, and also without Dean’s baggage of having had to BE her for Sam’s sake… Sam never had to become the parent because of Mary’s loss in their lives, because he had Dean to act as that buffer for him.

So Sam signing on with the BMoL here is more understandable with that context, that he wasn’t also the linchpin holding the Winchester Family together the way Dean always had to be. He related on a certain level to Mary’s desire for a different future, because he’d once tried to make a different for himself.

(not to mention, the BMoL’s stated intention of wiping out all the vampires hit a little close to his failed s8 mission to slam the gates of Hell, with a slightly less destroy-the-natural-order sense of cosmic consequences attached– at least on the surface… thank heck he eventually learns better…)

Dean, though… Mary was still out there hunting. She wasn’t out, like he’d thought she was (as she said she wanted all along). It wasn’t so much that she’d wanted space, but in Dean’s eyes she wanted to keep hunting, just not with  _him_. She’d not only abandoned him his entire life (even though that wasn’t her fault), left him to hold the family together and fill her shoes (and John’s when he essentially abandoned them for long stretches looking for his revenge for her death), she also rejected HIM and the person he grew up to be,  _and the life he’d chosen for himself_. She didn’t reject hunting, she rejected hunting with Dean (and Sam). She rejected family, in Dean’s eyes. Because the way he grew up, the definition of family that he understands, is very different from Mary’s definition… (as proven by what she said to Ketch about wanting both hunting and her family, and yet chosing to hunt with him instead of her family…)

That’s the betrayal that stung.

And that’s the betrayal that stung when Cas essentially did the same in 12.19… even after Dean pulled the Team Free Will card on him yet again. The “we three have always been enough” card.

 

[spn 12.14](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-12.14) [spn 12.19](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-12.19) [castiel winchester](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/castiel-winchester) [mary f. winchester](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/mary-f.-winchester) [s12 hellatus rewatch](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/s12-hellatus-rewatch) [spn 12.22](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-12.22) [winchester family dynamics](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/winchester-family-dynamics) [dear s12 pls stop hurting me thank :p](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/dear-s12-pls-stop-hurting-me-thank-%3Ap)


	54. Chapter 54

[Aug 26, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164658914095/the-scene-in-1214-where-sam-first-sees-the-colt)

21 notes

The scene in 12.14 where Sam first sees the Colt again, I know we meta’d this to death when it originally aired, but I can’t get past the feeling that Mary saw Sam’s reaction to it and just KNEW he had history with this gun.

Mick lifts a case onto the table [ Case thuds, latches open ]   
 **Sam** : [ Exhales sharply ] [ Exhales sharply ] Where’d you get this?  
 **Mary** : I stole it. From Ramiel.  
 **Mick** : Yeah, but it doesn’t work. We’ve no bullets.  
 **Sam** : Right. Right. [ Sniffs] Right, um Okay. We make some, then. Got the recipe from my buddy.  
 **Mary** : – Bobby Singer?

NOBODY gets that emotional over seeing a gun, you know? We know John never recorded anything in his journal about the Colt, because it was a surprise to Sam and Dean when he told them about it in 1.20… but what did Sam (or more likely Dean) record in that journal AFTER that point about the Colt?

Did Mary know their history with it all along? I kept waiting during s12 for her to hear just how important it was to them FROM them, but looking back now, I think she did know all along. She knew when she stole it from Ramiel. She knew when she asked Mick to bring it out in 12.14 as a last hope sort of weapon to save them from the vampires.

And I think a BIG part of Sam putting his trust in Mary with regards to the BMoL is the simple fact that Mary had read their journal, which likely contained the recipe for the special bullets that Sam gave to Mick… likely contained notes about the SOURCE of that recipe– Ruby the Demon and not Bobby Singer– and yet  _Mary had never passed on that key bit of into to the BMoL_. She let them continue thinking the Colt was as useful as a novelty paperweight.

And that’s why Sam chose to trust HER and give the BMoL a chance.

To Sam, the fact that she knew the recipe all along, yet left the decision of what to do about it UP TO SAM there… that was proof that she hadn’t truly betrayed them to the BMoL. She was still keeping their secrets, protecting them.

 

 

[spn 12.14](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-12.14) [mary f. winchester](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/mary-f.-winchester) [sam fucking winchester](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/sam-fucking-winchester) [s12 hellatus rewatch](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/s12-hellatus-rewatch) [that scene still breaks my heart and i've had it paused for like 15 minutes to type this up because i am compromised again](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/that-scene-still-breaks-my-heart-and-i%27ve-had-it-paused-for-like-15-minutes-to-type-this-up-because-i-am-compromised-again) [the colt](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/the-colt) [supernatural weapons](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/supernatural-weapons) [men of letters vs hunters](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/men-of-letters-vs-hunters)


	55. Chapter 55

[Aug 27, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164675702585/s12-rewatching-resumes-today-with-1215-and-my)

19 notes

S12 rewatching resumes today with 12.15, and my takeaway just from the opening scene is this:

Two people, alone in the woods, each with very different intentions and life goals, people who are on the cusp of discovering that their life goals are very different and are inevitably going to separate and each go their own way in the future despite their obvious care and affection for one another, yet their lives are destroyed by an invisible hand– an invisible monster– and neither of them did anything to deserve this. The monster had been freed to ruin their lives due to the entirely unrelated and careless machinations of a disinterested third party.

The surviving member of this duo returns home to mourn and recover, but is unknowingly stalked by the invisible force, and is saved by the intervention of Sam and Dean.

There are SO MANY partial or indirect parallels in this one scene, but not one entirely accurate DIRECT parallel to any one character. It leaves us with a sort of mysterious grab bag of potential references, but no clear definitive application of the entire narrative. In a lot of ways, that in itself is an excellent metaphor for s12 in general.

Let’s break it down just a little bit. This isn’t a full rendering of all the parallels, but just a sampler to get y’all started… (if I have any hope of finishing the s12 rewatch today, I must chill on pausing it writing long meta every five minutes):

**Two people, alone in the woods, each with very different intentions and life goals** : Sam and Dean? Dean and Crowley (they literally walk through those exact woods together later). Dean and Cas (they speak on the phone at the beginning and end of the episode like a tidy bookend).

**people who are on the cusp of discovering that their life goals are very different and are inevitably going to separate and each go their own way in the future despite their obvious care and affection for one another** : Sam and Dean, again, as we just learned about Sam’s working with the BMoL and Dean is still in the dark. Throughout the season we see the breakdown of their codependency, individuating themselves, and in 12.22 we see them literally go their separate ways to each take care of different issues (Sam dealing with the BMoL and Dean dealing with their family)

**yet their lives are destroyed by an invisible hand– an invisible monster– and neither of them did anything to deserve this** :  Sam, Dean, Cas, Mary, and to a slightly lesser extent of sharing in a portion of that “undeservedness,” Crowley. Crowley was, after all, the reason Lucifer hadn’t been safely locked back in the cage…

**The monster had been freed to ruin their lives due to the entirely unrelated and careless machinations of a disinterested third party** : I mean none of them is entirely free from responsibility in the things that go wrong for them by the end of the season, but heck… it all feels a little Cosmic Consequence-y anyway…

**The surviving member of this duo returns home to mourn and recover, but is unknowingly stalked by the invisible force, and is saved by the intervention of Sam and Dean** : Feels a bit like s13 speculation, actually…

 

 

[spn 12.15](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-12.15) [s12 hellatus rewatch](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/s12-hellatus-rewatch)


	56. Chapter 56

[Aug 27, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164677745330/rewatching-1216-and-never-noticed-the)

16 notes

rewatching 12.16, and never noticed the interesting sound effects in their first meeting with Hayden and her mother at the hospital. Sam and Dean (undercover as agents McVie and Fleetwood) are talking to the mom, who’s tentatively refusing to let them examine or interview Hayden… until Mick comes in disguised as “Dr. Buckingham,” and provides an excuse to examine Hayden on his own.

All through that scene, you can hear Hayden’s heart monitor beeping regularly, but the moment Mick pulls the privacy curtain across her bed, you hear one long “flatline” tone. Which we hear again when Hayden’s mom describes the “Fish and Wildlife” agent that Dean immediately recognizes as Claire from her description.

 

 

[spn 12.16](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-12.16) [i was gonna tag this 'silent storytelling' but that's really the wrong tag for this >.>](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/i-was-gonna-tag-this-%27silent-storytelling%27-but-that%27s-really-the-wrong-tag-for-this-%3E.%3E)[silent storytelling](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/silent-storytelling) [s12 hellatus rewatch](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/s12-hellatus-rewatch)


	57. Chapter 57

[Aug 27, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164679063200/1217-dean-look-its-not-kellys-fault-okay)

31 notes

12.17:

**Dean** : Look, it’s not Kelly’s fault, okay? She didn’t know Lucifer was her boyfriend.  
 **Mick** : Oh, sure, yeah. It could happen to anyone.  
 **Sam** : Plus, she’d agreed to end the pregnancy. And I guess she changed her mind. Even with everything Kelly knew, it… it was still her kid. She couldn’t.  
 **Mick** : Then you should have! You should’ve shot her between the eyes immediately.  
 **Dean** : Oh, why? ‘Cause that’s what you would’ve done?  
 **Sam** : Kind of like you killed that werewolf? 'Cause from what I remember, that really messed you up.  
 **Dean** : Yeah, 'cause you’re so big on second chances and all.  
 **Mick** : Yeah… yes. I’m not saying it was gonna be easy, but the Code demands it.  
 **Dean** : Oh. The Code.

1\. Yeah Dean is familiar with the special agony of discovering Lucifer was his boyfriend >.> Have some sympathy, Mick. This is Supernatural. It really COULD happen to anyone… (I mean technically it’s even happened to Sam in that vision back in 5.03, Lucifer was his girlfriend for a hot minute in his dream/vision…)

2\. Yeah, good to establish how killing innocents really messes people up. Basically lay all that groundwork for explaining Cas’s reasoning for working with Heaven right now, as well as putting his later motives for stealing the Colt INTO A DIRECT QUOTE FROM SAM (notice that’s not DEAN’S quote though… and in 12.19 Dean even frames Cas’s reasoning about sparing him from killing an innocent into SAM’S search for “another way” of handling their problem)

3\. Dean “screw your black and white code” Winchester

 

 

[spn 12.17](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-12.17) [spn 12.19](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-12.19) [s12 hellatus rewatch](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/s12-hellatus-rewatch) [this ain't meta folks just... kinda-sorta notes for potential future meta purposes](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/this-ain%27t-meta-folks-just...-kinda-sorta-notes-for-potential-future-meta-purposes)


	58. Chapter 58

[Aug 27, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164689849300/1219-more-creepy-off-balance-music-cues-letting)

30 notes

12.19: More creepy, off-balance music cues letting us know something’s NOT QUITE RIGHT HERE.

These jarring chord progressions are just as telling as things like the use of [certain camera angles](https://floralmotif.tumblr.com/post/158433948247/the-visual-narrative), lighting and shadows, and other visual cues (like certain beer signs– El Sol the beer of illusion and deception, or Schultz the beer of death, or Margiekugel the family beer, or Kingdom the sign of Heaven… the list goes on…) to let us know something is just “off” about what we’re seeing.

Heck even WAFFLES are a warning sign that all is not as it seems on this show. So we can extrapolate that out to recognize that the sound effects and soundtrack are used to similar purpose.

The scene where Dagon finds Kelly after her suicide attempt has some pretty damn jarring musical cues. A steadily descending, slightly off-key chord progression that just sounds  _wrong_  and upsetting. Because it’s alerting us to the fact that we’re supposed to interpret Kelly’s lines as  _wrong and upsetting_.

She looks up at Dagon with the absolute conviction of a True Believer in her eyes,  _having been resurrected from the dead_ , insisting that the nephilim wouldn’t let her die, and wrongly assuming that the nephilim’s motives were altruistic toward her.

By contrast, Dean and Cas’s entire conversation in his room, with the infamous mixtape has entirely ZERO musical cues. The scene is absolutely SILENT aside from the words they exchange, encouraging us to put our own soundtrack to that scene (possibly the entirety of the contents of that mixtape)…

Same with Dean and Sam’s entire conversation culminating in the revelation that they may have a “better way” of taking care of Kelly and the nephilim without killing either of them, by extracting the nephilim’s grace and potentially rendering him human… Absolutely silent until Dean excitedly gets up to track down Cas and tell him the good news. That’s when the sad string music kicks in, which feels weird over Dean’s positively charged emotions… until he opens the door to Cas’s room and finds he’s gone. Suddenly the sad string progression makes agonizing sense.

Same with Dagon’s speech to Kelly about how mistaken she is about the nephilim’s intentions for her. Silent until she talks about how Dagon herself will be there to step in and raise the baby (and we have another progression of low and ominous strings). The music from this scene bleeds over into Cas in his rain-splattered truck, carrying that “ominous” vibe into the beginning of his scene with Kelvin outside the house where Dagon is keeping Kelly.

Cas presents Kelvin with the Colt to the background noise of that [evil train whistle warning noise](http://neven-ebrez.tumblr.com/tagged/bells-and-whistles) (tagged with zerbe’s bells and whistles tag going back to s9). That whistle appears again behind Cas’s line of, “I-I stole the Colt to keep them out of this mission and to keep them safe from Dagon.” 

Cas and the other angels sneak into the house to the sounds of an inane game show and Dagon’s laughter, which is replaced with an urgently ominous string chord and horn fanfare in the soundtrack that fades out to a driving drum-backed mishmash of WARNING music when Cas rounds on where he believes Dagon to be only to have her appear behind him unexpectedly.

After all of Cas’s fears about Sam and Dean not being able to kill an innocent, and that being his entire reason for taking on that mission HIMSELF, stealing the Colt, and  _he failed to kill the innocent, too_. There’s no music behind his conversation with Kelly where she pushes Cas to admit this.

(As Dean lampshaded earlier, the only way they truly work well is when they work together, setting up the inherent failure of any plans they try to enact on their own… letting us know that Cas’s plan was destined to fail from the start…)

Dagon’s “chat” with Lucifer where he learns that Dagon lost Kelly to Cas is underlaid with a tense and nebulous miasma of strings and Lucifer’s screeching, as well as a high pitched whistle over the low brass honking of doom.

Cas’s entire conversation with Kelly in his truck after he receives his orders from Joshua, to bring Kelly through the portal to Heaven, describing what will happen to her is overlaid with the gentle whoosh of traffic noise and– strangely– the cheerful chirping of birds. He warns her that her baby could “bring the universe to its knees.” The MOMENT Kelly retorts with, “Or lift it to its feet,” ushers in a straining minor chord of strings, prompting us to subconsciously DOUBT HER WORDS HERE. Cas replies they can’t take that chance, and the music turns sad with the addition of Sad Oboe of Sadness as Cas can’t get the truck started again…

Sad Minor Key Oboe blends into the next scene, along with High Pitched Angel Whistling as Dagon tortures Kelvin for info, and resolves into more ominous and deeper tones yet again. That scene ends on another high pitched whistle that blends into Cas trying to hide Kelly at the motel.

again Cas’s entire conversation with Kelly about her suicide, the baby saving her, about there being no “Special Purpose” behind Lucifer’s desire to get her pregnant, aside from destruction and chaos, is entirely silent. UNTIL Cas gets to this: (annotated with the musical cue introduction)

_So even if you are right,_  [gentle crescendo of mournful sounding music]  _and even if the worst isn’t inevitable, then who will care for him when you’re gone? (Sighs) Who? Who is strong enough to protect him and to keep him from evil influences and to keep him on the righteous path?_

Followed by a high pitched sustained note while Kelly feels the baby kick, and Cas declines to put his hand on her belly to feel it, so instead KELLY GRABS HIS HAND AND INSISTS HE FEEL IT AGAINST HIS WILL, at which point the music turns from mournful to downright ominous again as we see Kelly’s eyes flare golden and hear the YED Sound Effect of Intense Doom overlaying her vision of Dagon burning at the sandbox.

That whole act of the episode ends on an extended unresolved note sustained over Cas answering the door to Sam and Dean.

We return to see Dean pushing Cas against the wall in anger (shot so lovely and romantically through the wall of circles), overlaid with a low note that resolves into a softer piano medley as they see Kelly. Then music goes silent while they question Cas.

Everything stays silent until Cas and Kelly are in the Impala. Cas tosses the keys over the front seat, Kelly says, “It’s not supposed to happen that way,” and glances down at the keys as very low and DANGER OMINOUS strings begin to play. Then we get the gunshot drum sounds as the DANGER OMINOUS strings are joined by the off-kilter high whistling noises and Kelly screeches out of the parking lot in Baby.

Cas has his crisis of faith in himself, and Kelly tells him they’re “destined” for something (and hell does that word have some horrifying baggage for Cas– having survived the Winchesters throwing off their destiny to end the world ffs). Cas says, “I wish I had your faith.” He wishes he had the sort of faith in HIMSELF that Kelly is heaping on him… but that wish goes so horribly bad. Cas never regains that faith in himself because Jack…  _hijacks_  it. When Kelly replies, “You will,” there’s no ominous music; there’s only the purr of the Impala’s engine.

The next scene opens with Dean repairing Cas’s truck, with a DOG BARKING in the distance, and Sam asking how any of this happened. The dog barks again when Sam says Cas’s name, barks twice when Dean says “Lucifer.” The barking continues during the gap after Dean tells Sam to give the ignition a try, and the truck starts with a screeching sound.

Cas and Kelly arrive at the Heaven Portal sandbox to sweet yet melancholy piano and oboe and string music, which takes a minor turn when Kelly utters the line, “As long as you’re here, I know it’s gonna be okay.” Cas give her a strange little look, but activates the portal with a shimmering sound effect, the music turning briefly “positive” in tone and overlaid with a “choir” effect.

Joshua steps out and encouragingly tells Kelly not to be scared before Dagon appears behind him and explodes him in a cloud of smoke. Followed immediately by the LOW RUMBLING PIANO CHORDS and the discordant high pitched whistling and the intense yet subtle Percussion of Intensity. They fight, and as Cas is thrown to the ground the music spirals higher, the strings whirling up through octaves until they feel like a swarm of raptors spiraling overhead. until Sam and Dean arrive, distracting Dagon from finishing Cas off just yet.

Dean aims the Colt at Dagon, but she disappears before he can fire, the percussion growing more intense throughout until we see Dagon had pulled the same trick she had before with Eileen– that if Dean had fired he would’ve shot Kelly who’d been standing behind Dagon… Dagon appears at Dean’s side and wrestles the Colt away from him, destroying it in a flash of searing light with the high pitched noise we’ve come to associate with searing lights on this show, and dramatic chords playing below it.

Then we’re back to the tympani rumble and minor strings, and the discordant woodwinds as Cas and Kelly join hands, and Cas is taken over by the creepy nephilim light ALONG WITH THE YELLOW EYED DEMON GROWLY NOISE OF NOPE NOPE NOPE, and the straining strings jump in intensity before being joined again by a low ominous note and then spiraling down the scales as Cas says, “Call it a miracle,” and Dagon burns, and her screams echo.

As Dean and Sam approach Cas to ask what that was all about, the music retains both it’s low and ominous tone, and its minor key… this is nothing good happening here. The music is telling us that something is very very wrong here.

When Cas heals Dean’s arm, there’s a brief infusion of a different, softer musical theme for a few moments, as well as the high-pitched “healing” sound, but the MOMENT Cas says, “Thank you for coming to fight for us,” the music reverts to the minor key again.

When Sam tries to stop Cas leaving, and says, “Hey, Cas, wait a second…”, the music resolved into a sustained violin note that’s held through Cas’s reply of, “You’re just going to have to trust me.”

Dean’s, “No, no, no, wait. Okay, whatever that thing did to you, we’re not just gonna let you walk away.” introduces the low, sad cello [Tears In Their Beers](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DyJ1hCoTJdPQ&t=MDUwOGViZWUwMWQ0Y2IzMjEzMDIwYTFjMjA5ZDBlMGVlNDIzZjhhMyxTNGZ3RFN1VA%3D%3D&b=t%3AgQ2jjt29OviG-kJJpyAysQ&p=http%3A%2F%2Fmittensmorgul.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F164689849300%2F1219-more-creepy-off-balance-music-cues-letting&m=1) theme. As Cas talks about the “future” Jack showed him, Tears in their Beers picks up a distinct air of menace with a rumbling bass note and two rasping higher pitched (and menacingly malicious) chords as we zoom out and see Sam and Dean lying unconscious on that playground.

So regardless of what you want to believe about this episode, the music is distinctly telling us where the points of greatest concern are, highlighting the fact that certain phrases were underscored with CLEAR AND OBVIOUS MENACE, and where we should presume malicious intent in the text.

 

[spn 12.19](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-12.19) [s12 hellatus rewatch](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/s12-hellatus-rewatch) [i figure if people insist there are multiple readings of what happened in this episode and don't want to acknowledge that the text](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/i-figure-if-people-insist-there-are-multiple-readings-of-what-happened-in-this-episode-and-don%27t-want-to-acknowledge-that-the-text) [is blatantly showing us that cas is not acting of his own free will here then maybe the soundtrack actively supporting that interpretation](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/is-blatantly-showing-us-that-cas-is-not-acting-of-his-own-free-will-here-then-maybe-the-soundtrack-actively-supporting-that-interpretation) [would count for something...](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/would-count-for-something...) [spn music](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-music) [though i recognize i'm likely beating my head against the same brick wall of 'every interpretation is valid!' nonsense with this](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/though-i-recognize-i%27m-likely-beating-my-head-against-the-same-brick-wall-of-%27every-interpretation-is-valid%21%27-nonsense-with-this) [it makes me feel better to know that at least jay gruska agrees with my interpretation :P](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/it-makes-me-feel-better-to-know-that-at-least-jay-gruska-agrees-with-my-interpretation-%3AP)


	59. Chapter 59

[Aug 27, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164693112915/god-watching-mary-struggle-to-hold-on-to-her-will)

12 notes

God watching Mary struggle to hold on to her will in 12.21 is agonizing, begging for Ketch to kill her so she won’t hurt her sons, as she realizes that the monsters she should’ve been fighting all along were the humans she’d signed on with…

And then Ketch reassures her it won’t be long before she doesn’t even remember having her own will, that she won’t remember having loved her sons, that it won’t matter to her anymore. Nothing will, because her ONLY motivation will be following the orders she’s given by the BMoL. Even if those orders are to attack, imprison, and kill her own sons.

And this is the state Dean is able to break her free from in 12.22, by forcing her to confront the absolute most painful parts of her own real life that she’d tried to bury through her work with the BMoL and her mission to create a world without monsters in the first place.

 

[spn 12.21](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-12.21) [s12 hellatus rewatch](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/s12-hellatus-rewatch) [spn 12.22](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-12.22)


	60. Chapter 60

[Aug 27, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164694948240/aah-1222-two-step-hybrid-magic-re-virginize)

20 notes

Aah, 12.22– Two-step hybrid magic. Re-virginize their blood to use in a ritual to essentially “reboot” the bunker. But it doesn’t work because in addition to all the other systems on lockdown, even magic itself is locked out. We finally see some blueprints of the bunker, and Sam and Dean learn more about how the place works in these two days trapped inside it than they have in five years living there. In the end it takes blowing down a wall to find the escape hatch so Dean can pull the manual reboot lever, but still, the symbolism is there. The Bunker is officially reborn, reincarnated, reclaimed.

Not to mention they rocked that spell on the table with their initials carved into it.

 

 

[spn 12.22](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-12.22) [the bunker](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/the-bunker) [s12 hellatus rewatch](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/s12-hellatus-rewatch)


	61. Chapter 61

[Aug 27, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164695215495/still-rewatching-1222-because-i-had-to-keep)

27 notes

still rewatching 12.22 because I had to keep rewatching the scene that begins with Dean talking about going out like Butch and Sundance, and Sam agreeing and throwing in, “Blaze of glory.” And then just enjoying everything about Dean’s face as he realizes what he gets to do.

[Originally posted by thejabberwock](https://tmblr.co/Zvu8vg2MXTsDW)

They’ll either go out in their blaze of glory, or they’ll win.

(spoiler alert: they win)

 

 

[spn 12.22](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-12.22) [s12 hellatus rewatch](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/s12-hellatus-rewatch) [this is such a good face](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/this-is-such-a-good-face) [and him and sam together agreeing that this is it and frankly LOVING that dean finally gets to shoot off his big beautiful dumb grenade :P](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/and-him-and-sam-together-agreeing-that-this-is-it-and-frankly-LOVING-that-dean-finally-gets-to-shoot-off-his-big-beautiful-dumb-grenade-%3AP) [grenadebaiting: the ongoing saga](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/grenadebaiting%3A-the-ongoing-saga)


	62. Chapter 62

[Aug 28, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164716866975/after-getting-to-the-end-of-the-tnt-loop-and)

107 notes

After getting to the end of the TNT loop and marathonning 11.23-12.23 over the weekend, looping back to 1.01 this morning was strange. As it usually is.

But immediately after watching 12.22, going back to the story of Constance Welch, for the first time, felt like a relief rather than a horror.

Constance’s revenge mission against “unfaithful men” was only a distraction from HER real issue– guilt over having killed her own children because of her husband’s infidelity. Her husband was merely an excuse, turning her personal guilt outward into misdirected anger and violence.

Almost as if Mary’s personal story in s12 brought her to a similar point, before allowing her redemption and forgiveness in 12.22, because the life she’d WANTED for her boys never came to pass because of her own actions, but her children had long ago accepted the life they DO have.

Like Constance’s children saying, “You’ve come home to us, Mommy,” when Sam drives her ghost into the house, and their spirits are what devours hers. It was acknowledging her personal guilt toward them that unmade her vengeful spirit.

Constance, over years of repeating her mantra of “I can never go home” because she couldn’t confront the reality of her guilt, instead set out on a mission to destroy “all the monsters” who she believed might hurt other women the way she felt her husband had hurt her. Like Mary running off with the BMoL and joining their mission to destroy all the ACTUAL monsters in a misguided attempt to save her sons from having to.

Both of their stories were about guilt, what they felt guilty for (for what they believed they’d each done to their children), misdirected anger and a misguided sense of revenge against another target in order to deflect or avoid dealing with their personal guilt, but in the end being forced to acknowledge that guilt and finally understand their children forgive them, and had only been longing for her to come home.

  

[spn 1.01](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-1.01) [spn 12.23](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-12.23) [s12 hellatus rewatch](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/s12-hellatus-rewatch) [honestly this is the first time I've EVER looped back around to the pilot and felt THIS GOOD about it :P](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/honestly-this-is-the-first-time-I%27ve-EVER-looped-back-around-to-the-pilot-and-felt-THIS-GOOD-about-it-%3AP)


	63. Chapter 63

[Aug 30, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/164793806625/watching-112-and-its-really-hard-to-feel-any)

18 notes

Watching 1.12, and it’s REALLY hard to feel any sympathy for Layla Rourke’s mom at all anymore (I mean not like she was ever really a sympathetic character to start with since she basically told Dean to his face that he didn’t deserve to live… i mean…), but heck she’s the same actress who played Dr.  ~~Umbridge~~ Hess of the BMoL in s12, and I just can’t unsee that anymore… :P

 

 

[spn 1.12](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-1.12) [s12 hellatus rewatch](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/s12-hellatus-rewatch)


	64. Chapter 64

[Sep 12, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/165277540810/rewatching-310-again-and-it-is-giving-me)

16 notes

Rewatching 3.10 again, and it is giving me Feelings™ knowing that Cas may be having this sort of conversation with a version of himself in s13… But I have a few other thoughts on this episode before I talk about that. I’ve probably said some of this stuff before, but I at least want to make a note for myself about it here.

First off, when Bobby wakes up from the dream root dream, this is what’s bothering Dean about the accuracy of the nightmare that Jeremy chose to torture Bobby with:

**DEAN** : How’d he know how to dig up your worst nightmare and throw it at you?  
 **BOBBY** : Hey, he was rooting around in my skull. God knows what he saw in there.

Which leads me to ponder that connection with the dream Dean and Sam saw when they eventually took the dream root again… and saw a vision of Lisa. Dean had protested Sam coming along into the dream with him, because Dean didn’t want Sam poking around inside his head the way Jeremy had with Bobby. AND SAM USED DEAN’S HAIR TO ENTER DEAN’S HEAD THE SAME WAY JEREMY USED BOBBY’S SPIT TO ENTER BOBBY’S HEAD.

I know, I’ve argued before that Dean really wasn’t lying about never having had that dream of Lisa before, but I really do think he was telling the truth there. He’s just so damn shifty about it. I’ve always thought it was Sam pulling on that thought, since his whole reason for infiltrating Dean’s dreams there was to keep Dean safe…

**DEAN** : Come on man, we can’t find him, so let him come to me.  
 **SAM** : On his own turf? Where he’s basically a god?  
 **DEAN** : I can handle it.  
 **SAM** : Not alone, you can’t.

Jeremy was “basically a god” because he was the one entering other people’s dreams. He was the interloper forcing people to dream what he wanted them to. That’s the way dream root works. And that’s the advantage Sam had over Dean in that dream.

When Lisa disappears in the dream, Dean is CONFUSED. He asks where she went, and looks over at SAM. Sam had been totally focused on the “Lisa illusion” UNTIL SAM BECAME DISTRACTED BY JEREMY LURKING IN THE WOODS. When SAM stopped focusing on the Lisa Dream, she disappeared.

She was never Dean’s dream, but Sam’s dream for Dean.

(just like she was in 5.22…)

Here, where Sam went along INTO DEAN’S HEAD with the express goal of PROTECTING DEAN from whatever nightmare Jeremy tried to pull out of him, Sam was trying to pull something safe and pleasant out, and this is what he found. But Dean, again, was confused by it…

But I don’t think Jeremy was able to follow and manipulate more than one person’s dreams at a time, which gave Sam and Dean the upper hand. SAM followed Jeremy through the woods, essentially becoming the human shield between Jeremy and Dean. Jeremy recognized that the primary threat to him wasn’t Dean, but Sam, and that’s why Sam interacted with Jeremy while Dean was left with nobody’s head to mess with but his own. Hence his conversation with his dream!demon self.

Just like Bobby’s earlier dream that both Sam and Dean “invaded.” Bobby and Dean got a few minutes of reprieve from “Karen’s” attack, because Jeremy was detoured outside to take care of Sam. It was long enough for Dean to talk Bobby around into recognizing he was dreaming and get him to wake up.

But in Dean’s conversation with his dream!demon self, he first thinks he’s going to confront Jeremy. He isn’t expecting to face himself. It’s also why Dean can’t “escape” the dream, even though he knows it is a dream.

All the while Jeremy focuses on Sam, resetting him back to the start of the dream and waking him up in the Impala again.

Yet again, Sam’s forced to confront an outside threat while Dean is forced to confront his own internal darkness.

(heeeyyyy let’s tie this all together with the main reason the back half of s10 pisses mittens off!)

Sam is finally able to overcome Jeremy even without a dream root potion that contained a bit of Jeremy’s DNA because Sam didn’t need to poke around inside Jeremy’s head to know what could defeat him. He knew what Jeremy’s father looked like, knew what he’d done to Jeremy, and it was easy at that point for Sam to conjure up the one “dream” that could take care of him…

Sam even confirmed afterward that Jeremy had been trying to keep him separated from Dean, because it was “easier to beat my brains out” while he was alone… 

Anyway, yes. Cas is so due for one of these sorts of confrontations with himself. I would so love to see him get something like this in s13…

 

 

[spn 3.10](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-3.10) [spn s13 speculation](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-s13-speculation) [s12 hellatus rewatch](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/s12-hellatus-rewatch) [pffft this is hellatus rewatch 2 but whatever that tag's still good .](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/pffft-this-is-hellatus-rewatch-2-but-whatever-that-tag%27s-still-good-.) [edited to add a bit of clarification to one bit but nothing major](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/edited-to-add-a-bit-of-clarification-to-one-bit-but-nothing-major)[lisa braeden](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/lisa-braeden)


	65. Chapter 65

[Sep 14, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/165334506120/rewatching-315-and-i-noticed-an-interesting)

70 notes

Rewatching 3.15, and I noticed an interesting parallel, and once again wished I could gif things, because Dean’s face is delightful:

Sam describes Doc Benton’s activities while Dean’s enjoying a burger. Please note in the second pic how pleased Sam is with himself thinking he’s managed to put Dean off his food ([x](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.homeofthenutty.com%2Fsupernatural%2Fscreencaps%2Fthumbnails.php%3Falbum%3D59%26page%3D3&t=NDFjZWIzMGFlNmI4YmYwNzU4YTIzOTdiZTNhMzhiOTlkOThiYzZhMCxGVm9EREtncA%3D%3D&b=t%3AgQ2jjt29OviG-kJJpyAysQ&p=http%3A%2F%2Fmittensmorgul.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F165334506120%2Frewatching-315-and-i-noticed-an-interesting&m=1)):

**SAM** : According to this, Benton’s picky about where he sets up his lab. He likes dense forest with access to a river or stream or some kind of freshwater.  
 **DEAN** : (Taking another huge bite of his burger) Why?  
 **SAM** : Because that’s where he likes to dump the bile and intestines and fecal matter. (DEAN looks disgusted and lowers his burger, gagging slightly) Lost your appetite yet?  
[DEAN considers this, looking at the burger and then at SAM, then back at the burger.]  
 **DEAN** : (to his burger) Oh baby, I can’t stay mad at you.  
[DEAN takes a huge bite, staring at SAM as he chews.]

This reminds me of two distinct scenes that we yelled about A LOT in 12.18, and it makes for an excellent game of Spot The Difference. First, we have Dean stealing Sam’s veggie omelette or whatever it was, complaining that Sam should’ve ordered pancakes, and then regretfully digging in anyway. Sam gets his revenge by being as gross as possible while trying to put Dean off his food as if this was some game they played regularly ([x](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.homeofthenutty.com%2Fsupernatural%2Fscreencaps%2Fthumbnails.php%3Falbum%3D279%26page%3D6&t=ZjUwMWQyZWU4MjFhZmM5NzIxYzg0MzM5NDQ3ZjZjZDM4NzYzYjFjMSxGVm9EREtncA%3D%3D&b=t%3AgQ2jjt29OviG-kJJpyAysQ&p=http%3A%2F%2Fmittensmorgul.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F165334506120%2Frewatching-315-and-i-noticed-an-interesting&m=1)):

**SAM** : So listen, satyrs are creatures of uncontrollable lust. They would lead people to the woods for massive orgies.  
 **DEAN** : Nice.  
 **SAM** : And when the fun was over, the satyr would, “feast upon the flesh of his victims until his belly was full to bursting with their moist, slippery meat.”  
 **DEAN** : That’s descriptive. [Dean pushes the plate of eggs away, looking a bit ill] Uh… All right, what do we do?

In this scene, Sam succeeds at putting Dean off his food. But there’s a difference. Dean didn’t choose that plate of egg white veggie nonsense. SAM DID. Dean had only started eating it because  _it was there and he needed food_. He even states out loud what HE would’ve chosen for himself, if he’d been able to place his own order. Sam’s gross-out attempt is enough to make him stop eating this time. He pushes it to the side.

Funny thing is, Dean literally walked in the door of the diner  _with the waitress he’d spent the night with_. He could’ve said something to her like, “Oh, I’d love a stack of pancakes when you get a chance,” or she could’ve offered to bring him breakfast since that was her place of work and literally her job to do, but no. Dean doesn’t ask, she doesn’t offer, so he settles for what Sam had in front of him already. And it’s really not to his taste.

A few scenes later, after Sam and Dean visit the meat packing plant, we find Dean back in the cafe. This time he’s sitting alone at the counter while Carmen bustles around in the background, doing her job and not really paying ant attention to Dean (or he to her). He’s also eating a very messily ketchup-ed burger, and apparently relishing every bite… ([x](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.homeofthenutty.com%2Fsupernatural%2Fscreencaps%2Fthumbnails.php%3Falbum%3D279%26page%3D8&t=MzI3ZTJlYzM1MTA4OGMxNmI5ZDk3YTExYjlmMjQxN2FjMWFkMTM3MSxGVm9EREtncA%3D%3D&b=t%3AgQ2jjt29OviG-kJJpyAysQ&p=http%3A%2F%2Fmittensmorgul.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F165334506120%2Frewatching-315-and-i-noticed-an-interesting&m=1)):

**SAM** : Seriously? Dean? After what we just saw, how – how can you eat?  
 **DEAN** : Grow up, Sam, okay? Burger’s beef, bacon’s pig, Soylent Green’s people. But this – this… This is heaven.

FINALLY. Dean doesn’t make apologies or excuses for what he enjoys. He’s not pretending to himself or Sam, and he’s not letting Sam play their game of gross-out. He’s just unapologetically enjoying what he wants. Not only does he not coddle Sam or humor him or play to his expectations. Dean puts his foot down and tells Sam flat-out that he’s not bullshitting him here, and if Sam’s grossed out that’s his problem. Dean’s not making jokes or excuses or apologies.

 

 

[spn 3.15](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-3.15) [spn 12.18](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-12.18) [s12 hellatus rewatch](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/s12-hellatus-rewatch) [the bs cafe](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/the-bs-cafe) [performing dean](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/performing-dean) [sam fucking winchester](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/sam-fucking-winchester) [i do believe that i have spent entirely too much time looking very very VERY closely at 12.18 :P](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/i-do-believe-that-i-have-spent-entirely-too-much-time-looking-very-very-VERY-closely-at-12.18-%3AP)


	66. Chapter 66

S[ep 15, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/165370572960/rewatching-403-and-feeling-the-sense-of)

42 notes

Rewatching 4.03, and feeling the sense of horrifying futility combined with the horrifying urgency of fighting against destiny. The entire premise for Dean being sent back to 1973 proved a false assumption by the end of the episode:

DEAN is dreaming. We see flashes of his terrified face, in red, and the sound of screams. He wakes to find CASTIEL sitting on his bed.  
 **CASTIEL** : Hello, Dean. What were you dreaming about?  
 **DEAN** : What, do you get your freak on by watching other people sleep? What do you want?  
 **CASTIEL** : Listen to me. You have to stop it.  
 **DEAN** : Stop what?  
CASTIEL puts two fingers to DEAN’s forehead.

There’s the first “STOP IT” Dean’s charged with. He’s given no further information, thrown into a baffling situation, and left to his own devices at the mercy of the entire situation:

**CASTIEL** : Time is fluid, Dean. It’s not easy, but we can bend it on occasion.  
 **DEAN** : Well bend it back or tell me what the hell I’m doing here!  
 **CASTIEL** : I told you, you have to stop it.  
 **DEAN** : Stop what? Huh? What, is there something nasty after my Dad? [DEAN turns as a car horn sounds. When he turns back, CASTIEL is gone.] Oh, come on! What, are you allergic to straight answers, you son of a bitch?!

And Cas again gives him that instruction, to “STOP IT.” We feel Dean’s frustration, but his own curiosity about his parents drives him to insert himself into the events of their lives, from following John to the car dealership and convincing him to buy the Impala all the way to discovering Mary and her family’s lives as hunters. But he still has no idea what he’s been ordered to “stop.” He’s been shoved into a situation he has no reference for and the demand is made for him to intervene and prevent some unknown event. Frustration intensifies. :P

Strangely enough, our next “STOP IT” comes not from Cas, but from John Winchester. While Dean’s questioning him at the car dealership, Dean’s floundering while trying to understand this entire bizarre situation he’s found himself in, so he defaults to what he knows in an attempt to find his feet here:

**DEAN** : I’ve been hung over before but, hey, I was, I was getting chills in that diner. You didn’t feel any of those cold spots, did you?  
 **JOHN** : Nope.  
 **DEAN** : I swore I smelled something weird too, you know? Like… like rotten eggs. You didn’t happen to smell any sulfur by chance?  
 **JOHN** : No.  
 **DEAN** : No… There been any cattle mutilations in town recently?  
 **JOHN** : Okay, mister! Stop it.  
 **DEAN** : Yeah, if only I knew what to stop. Listen, uh – watch out for yourself okay?

Poor Dean, he leaves this confrontation feeling no less confused and frustrated than he’d been before. He even acknowledges that this is becoming a theme for his day, “if only I knew what to stop.”

After discovering the Campbell family, that they’re hunters, and that clues from John’s journal about the history of Azazel’s involvement in what happened in Sam’s nursery in 1983, linking it back to events that happened in Lawrence in 1973 (conveniently within DAYS of when Dean had been sent back in time), he thinks he may have hit upon his reason for having been sent there. Maybe this is the thing he’s been sent back to stop…

Dean knows from his own experience where the Colt is (Daniel Elkins had it in Colorado, and Dean had visited the man’s house after he was killed in 1.20), so he puts his Major Play into action, thinking he has a real chance to stop Azazel before he has a chance to destroy his family.

**DEAN** : I know you guys think I’m crazy.  
 **SAMUEL** : You seem like a really nice kid, Dean, but yeah, you’re crazy.  
 **DEAN** : Yeah, maybe, but I know where this bastard’s gonna be, and I’m gonna stop it, once and for all.

But wow, wouldn’t that be something. Dean’s entire life would’ve been different if he’d managed to stop THAT, you know? 

**DEAN** : Alright, if I do this, then the family curse breaks, right? Mom and Dad live happily ever after, and – and, Sam and I grow up playing little league and chasing tail?  
 **CASTIEL** : You realize, if you do alter the future, your father, you, Sam – you’ll never become hunters. And all those people you saved, they’ll die.  
 **DEAN** : I realize.  
 **CASTIEL** : And you don’t care?  
 **DEAN** : Oh, I care. I care a lot, but these are my parents. I’m not gonna let them die again. I can’t. No, not if I can stop it.

Before we move on to the conclusion, there were two other events in this episode that involved this concept, but as they related to the story as opposed to how they related to Dean’s involvement specifically, and are worth mentioning:

The boy, Charlie, who Dean and Mary interviewed in the guise of a priest after his father had been killed. Charlie had made a deal (unbeknownst to him) with a yellow-eyed demon, because that demon had promised that his father’s drunken beatings would end:

**CHARLIE** : Did I want the beatings to stop? I just thought he was crazy, I didn’t think – and the next thing I know, Dad’s dead. Am I going to jail? 

He just wanted the Bad Thing to stop (which ended up leading him into something far worse, the consequences of which he couldn’t even BEGIN to imagine…).

Next we have Dean’s confrontation with Daniel Elkins over his “borrowing” the Colt. It led Dean to make this ultimatum:

**DEAN** : Look, I have a chance to save my family’s lives. My family. But I need this gun to do it. So if you want to stop me? Kill me. 

That’s pretty dramatic there, Deano. So the only way to “stop it” in this instance was really an untenable threat.

After all of these events, after Cas boops him back to the present, Dean feels like a failure, that the whole mission was futile. No matter what he did, he couldn’t stop anything, but Cas also finally reveals the truth:

**DEAN** : I couldn’t stop any of it. She still made the deal. She still died in the nursery, didn’t she?  
 **CASTIEL** : Don’t be too hard on yourself. You couldn’t have stopped it.  
 **DEAN** : What?  
 **CASTIEL** : Destiny can’t be changed, Dean. All roads lead to the same destination.  
 **DEAN** : Then why’d you send me back?  
 **CASTIEL** : For the truth. Now you know everything we do.

The whole point wasn’t about stopping anything, it was about understanding and knowledge. Which makes the last command Castiel issues to Dean at the end of the episode feel particularly weighty and inevitable:

**CASTIEL** : We know what Azazel did to your brother. What we don’t know is why – what his endgame is. He went to great lengths to cover that up.  
 **DEAN** : Where’s Sam?  
 **CASTIEL** : 425 Waterman. You brother is headed down a dangerous road, Dean, and we’re not sure where it leads. So stop it. Or we will. 

And right there we have the inevitability of the apocalypse laid out for us in this one tiny order. STOP IT.

Of course Dean couldn’t stop it alone. It took Castiel finally rejecting the “destiny” set forth in Heaven, it took Sam eventually choosing to say yes to Lucifer and finding it within himself to overpower that destiny through sheer force of will, and it took Dean refusing to say yes to Michael who was the ultimate symbol of Heaven’s inflexible rejection of free will. It took all of them in order to eventually overcome destiny, and to finally stop it.

Way back in 4.03, though, they didn’t even have a complete understanding of everything they’d need to stop in the first place. This right here was stone number one in building that understanding that would eventually give them firm enough footing to wrangle that destiny around to their will. 

[spn 4.03](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-4.03) [that's what free will is](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/that%27s-what-free-will-is) [s12 hellatus rewatch](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/s12-hellatus-rewatch)


	67. Chapter 67

#  [Anna, Grace, and Humanity](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/165517678485/anna-grace-and-humanity)

[Sep 19, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/165517678485/anna-grace-and-humanity)

163 notes

(note: I’d written about a thousand words of this post when my laptop suddenly rebooted without warning and ate the entire thing. This is my post-screaming-fit attempt to recreate it. This time I’m typing it in a google doc because autosave is my friend… I should really do this more often and stop playing so fast and loose with typing directly into tumblr posts, especially on long posts…)

I know I’ve written a metric ton of stuff about angels and grace and souls. I’ve got multiple tags for all of these things. I just rewatched 4.10, though, and realized just how Anna’s situation has served as the exemplar for how all of this functions within the entirety of canon. Despite a lot of exploration in later seasons that may seem to tinker with these fundamental ideas about exactly what grace is, I think that these essential facts still hold true. Even through what we later learn about Chuck creating the angels and human souls, the nature of Free Will, and what happens to Cas in s9 after Metatron removes his grace, and what happens to Metatron after Cas subsequently removes his grace. All of that still firmly fits within the framework of everything laid out in 4.10 about angels and identity and what grace actually is.

**Sam** : Wait a minute. I don’t understand. So, angels can just become human?  
 **Anna** : It kind of hurts. Try cutting your kidney out with a butter knife. That kind of hurt. I ripped out my grace.  
 **Dean** : Come again?  
 **Anna** : My grace. It’s… energy. Hacked it out and fell. My mother, Amy, couldn’t get pregnant. Always called me her little miracle. She had no idea how right she was.

Grace… is energy. And whatever makes Anna who she is– for lack of a better word, her personality– her memories, her thoughts and feelings, her emotions, her very consciousness, is explicitly differentiated and separated from “her grace.” In this analogy, her grace is not equivalent AT ALL to who she is. It’s not her identity.

**DEAN** : So, what, you’re just gonna take some divine bong hit, and, shazam, you’re Roma Downey?  
 **ANNA** : Something like that.  
 **DEAN** : All right. I like this plan. So, where’s this grace of yours?  
 **ANNA** : Lost track. I was falling about 10,000 miles per hour at the time.  
 **SAM** : Wait. You mean falling, like, literally?  
 **ANNA** : Yes.  
 **SAM** : Like the way a human eye can see? Like a comet, maybe, or a meteor?

She fell, but she lost track of this “energy” falling separately from her. That energy doesn’t have its own consciousness. So then what is it? I’ll get to that in a second, but first, Sam confirms this separation from who Anna identifies as versus the power itself:

**SAM** : Here. In march ‘85, a meteorite vanished in the night sky over northwestern Ohio. It was sighted nine months before Anna was born, and she was born in that part of Ohio.  
 **RUBY** : You’re pretty buff for a nerd.  
 **SAM** : Look, I think it was Anna and here, same time – another meteor over Kentucky.  
 **RUBY** : And that’s her grace?  
 **SAM** : Might be.

Anna fell over Ohio, and her grace, separate from her, fell in Kentucky. We learn a few minutes later what her grace actually is, confirming the sort of “energy” it is, which is essentially how Chuck describes all of creation toward the end of s11:

**SAM** : Yeah. In '85, there was an empty field outside of town. Six months later, there was a full-grown oak. They say it looks a century old at least.  
 **DEAN** : Anna, what do you think?  
 **ANNA** : The grace. Where it hit, it could have done something like that, easy.  
 **DEAN** : So grace ground zero – it’s not destruction. It’s…  
 **ANNA** : Pure creation.

Grace is potential, it’s energy, it’s power. It’s batteries. That’s it. It doesn’t even affect Anna’s assumptions about her own identity. Before Pamela helps her recover her lost memories, Anna believes she’s human. After a lifetime of forgetting who she was (after some psychotherapy she had as a small child that HELPED her forget who she was), nothing changed except her ability to recall her true identity, and yet she immediately stopped thinking of herself as human after regaining those lost memories.

Anna hadn’t recovered her grace. She was still the exact same metaphysically both before and after that scene with Pamela, except that afterward she no longer identified herself as a human:

**ANNA** : Thank you, Pamela. That helps a lot. I remember now.  
 **SAM** : Remember what?  
 **ANNA** : Who I am.  
 **DEAN** : I’ll bite. Who are you?  
 **ANNA** : I’m an angel.

Even without her grace, she identified WHO she was as an angel, even if that wasn’t WHAT she was at that moment, without her grace. Even after choosing to fall, tearing out that grace so she could experience humanity, this still shows her perceptions about herself– with or without the power pack installed– aren’t any different. She still fundamentally identifies as an angel. Even though she was physically and arguably metaphysically human at that moment.

A common misconception about s4 is that Cas somehow “stole Anna’s arc” or “replaced Anna” as Dean’s guardian angel, and I know I’ve already written multiple times how that’s just… patently not true on any level. But here we go again, for the sake of completeness and transparency.

Anna was introduced as an inverse mirror for Castiel. An angel who chose to fall, who was fascinated with humanity and lived Anna’s entire human life as a human, forgetting who she was, prompted to recall her original nature by Cas’s shout of DEAN WINCHESTER IS SAVED, and then being manipulated into restoring her grace. And even the restoration of that grace didn’t fundamentally change WHO SHE WAS. What it did allow was the return of her full angelic power. She didn’t lose her identity because of it, at least not until the very nature of that grace itself made it possible for her to be “reprogrammed” in Heaven. Only after she was captured and tortured and reprogrammed did she really lose her identity.

In later seasons, we see Cas go through almost the exact opposite progression. He retains his grace, his angelic nature, and yet becomes more and more human despite that. When he eventually does have his grace taken against his will and becomes fully human, he is still fundamentally the same individual. It’s only after being manipulated in Heaven that he’d lost control of his own identity. Even taking on the stolen grace of other angels did not change how he thought or behaved or felt. He was still Cas, but with a different set of cosmic batteries powering him up. Like he’d been a drained car battery that got a jump start from another angel.

Grace is not WHO Cas is. Though having grace versus not having grace might change WHAT he is.

And over the last several years, this has been Cas’s crisis of identity. EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of Anna’s arc in practically every way.

When Anna remembered everything, she had no crisis of identity. She had no doubts about WHO she was. Even before she took her grace back to reclaim WHAT she used to be. She never doubted that she was an angel or struggled to resolve her humanity with her identity  _as an angel_. And this is the fundamental difference between how she identified herself, and the struggle Cas has been facing. When asked if he’s an angel or a man, he just doesn’t have an answer for that yet.

Even with his grace restored, even after telling Sam and Dean that he feels that they’re his family, even after telling Kelvin flat-out that he doesn’t care about his reputation in Heaven and he’s entirely motivated by his relationship with the Winchesters, he’s still conflicted. It’s almost as if his grace is what’s actively preventing him from letting himself really, truly feel all of that.

**ANNA** : Perfect… Like a marble statue. Cold… no choice… only obedience.

And then how Anna refers to angelic disobedience:

**ANA** : I don’t know. Maybe I don’t deserve to be saved.  
 **DEAN** : Don’t talk like that.  
 **ANNA** : I disobeyed. Lucifer disobeyed. It’s our murder one, and I knew it. Maybe I got to pay.  
 **DEAN** : Yeah, well, we’ve all done things we got to pay for.

Disobedience is “murder one” for angels. And what has Cas essentially embodied as an angel? Certainly not one for following the rules…

In s5 when he was cut off from Heaven and his powers faded, he wasn’t fundamentally different, aside from not having powers. In 6.19 when Eve cut off his powers, he was still the same. In s9 living entirely as a human, he was still Cas. With Theo’s stolen grace, and then Adina’s, he didn’t suddenly become a different “person.”

At the very end of the episode, after everything Dean learned about Anna, what motivated her desire to be human, and what’s now become of her now that she had been manipulated into taking her grace back on, we get one of the most painful truths about all of it:

**SAM** : So, I guess she’s some big-time angel now, huh? She must be happy… Wherever she is.  
 **DEAN** : I doubt it.

She hadn’t wanted to lose WHAT she’d become (as a human). She really had no other choice. WHO she was, though… that never changed at all. Grace or not. The only thing she got back with her grace was her powers, and through them eventually the obligation, the duty, that Heaven could “reprogram” back into pure obedience and loss of self.

Dean had it right. Everything that had made her happy, she lost it when she had to retake her grace. If she’d had a choice, I don’t believe she ever would’ve reclaimed her grace. And it wouldn’t have altered her identity one iota.

  

[on the nature of angel grace](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/on-the-nature-of-angel-grace) [angels and souls](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/angels-and-souls) [castiel winchester](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/castiel-winchester) [anna milton](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/anna-milton) [i didn't even touch on the vessel situation here but even THAT is similar for anna and cas](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/i-didn%27t-even-touch-on-the-vessel-situation-here-but-even-THAT-is-similar-for-anna-and-cas) [i.e. they were both angels in vessels that 100% belonged only to them-- anna's because she was born in it and cas through resurrection](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/i.e.-they-were-both-angels-in-vessels-that-100%25-belonged-only-to-them---anna%27s-because-she-was-born-in-it-and-cas-through-resurrection) [are you an angel or a man castiel? (hint: he's no angel)](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/are-you-an-angel-or-a-man-castiel%3F-%28hint%3A-he%27s-no-angel%29) [you learned it from the goats](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/you-learned-it-from-the-goats) [spn 4.10](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-4.10) [s12 hellatus rewatch](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/s12-hellatus-rewatch)


	68. Chapter 68

#  [Family Business](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/166327390805/family-business)

[Oct 12, 2017](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/166327390805/family-business)

25 notes

I just rewatched 7.18 and couldn’t help notice a LOT of connections back to 12.18, so here’s a bullet-pointed list:

-Both episodes involve a long-standing family business. In 12.18 it takes the form of a meat packing plant owned by a single family for generations, while 7.18 is a brewery owned by three friends who intend to pass the business on to their children. Legacies!

-12.18 involved a man who was desperate to leave the horror associated with his family’s legacy behind and atone for the bad deeds of his ancestors, while 7.18 involved two of the three partners in the brewery “selling the business out from under” the third, and the third seeking revenge for having been “sold out”

-7.18′s brewery was called Northwest while it was lampshaded several times that it was actually located in Kansas, despite the beer they produced being popular in the PNW… and the plant in 12.18 was actually located in the PNW but for some reason ([I meta’d at the time](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/159572483805/you-learned-it-from-the-goats)) prominently featured a real-world beer brand produced in the midwest… (also see this post about[ the rule of three](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/159622718155/the-rule-of-three), since it also seems relevant to the three owners of the original brewery in 7.18)

-both episodes involve the subversion of a legacy… in 7.18 one partner was cheated out of the business by the other two because he refused to “sell out” to a brewer and was trying to preserve the integrity of their small craft beer, but in 12.18 one man was trying to reclaim his family’s integrity by selling out the “company town” to the people his family’s dark past and greed had essentially held bound for generations.

-in 7.18 the excluded party uses a shojo– a spirit trapped in a bottle of sake and specifically targeted to kill an entire family via a spell– to exact his revenge. In 12.18, one brother had tried to dismantle the influence his family had wielded via an entrapped old god while another brother discovered that legacy and freed the god to do HIS bidding.

-both episodes featured an “illegitimate son” of the families in question– in 7.18 he was unaware of his status as a potential heir to the business and it only came out in order to save his life from the shojo. in 12.18, the illegitimate son KNEW his whole life that he’d been excluded from the family business and had been the one to begin the killings again in a misguided grab for some of that family power he’d never been allowed to have before.

And then there’s just the surface-level similarities between the episodes, such as the fact that Sam and Dean were brought into both cases by an outside party. In 7.18 it was a “friendly” party– i.e. Garth– who had no malicious intent behind asking for their help. In 12.18 it was the BMoL, who used the entire case as a distraction to gain access to the Winchester’s secure base (and tidy Family Legacy Metaphor), the Bunker.

Garth always seems to show up some of Performing Dean’s manly-man mask, freely admitting he specifically chose the weird motel room BECAUSE of the reasons Dean mocked him about it for:

DEAN picks up a motel card on the table next to him.  
 **DEAN** : "Afternoon Delights"? Really, Garth? Don’t you think this place is a little, uh…  
 **GARTH** : Uh, you want a nice hot tub after a day at the office. It’s the little things.

and then makes fun of the froofy beer before actually tasting it…

**SAM** : Hey. Either of you ever heard of Thighslapper Ale?  
 **GARTH** : Is that a stripper or a beverage?  
 **DEAN** : Beverage for douchebags.  
 **SAM** : Uh, number one microbrew in the Pacific Northwest.  
 **GARTH** : But we’re in Kansas.  
 **DEAN** : Yeah, I rest my case. What’s your point?  
[…]  
 **DEAN** : All right, that’s it. [He gets up.] No microbrew is worth… [He puts his flask down on the counter near GARTH and the EMF reader starts to make noise.] …what was it – eight Food Magazine awards? [He takes beer bottles out of the fridge.] Beer’s not food. It’s… [He puts a bottle down for GARTH.] …whatever water is.  
DEAN gives SAM a bottle and inspects the label on his own bottle.  
 **DEAN:** Hmm. Thighslapper. [He takes a drink.] Wow, that’s actually awesome. Damn it, I’m not even mad anymore.

And I think we’ve meta’d[ the Performing Dean of 12.18](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/the-bs-cafe) to absolute death, right? Right.

And in both episodes, Cas is… out of the picture. In 7.18 he’d just taken on Sam’s hell damage and was catatonic in a mental hospital. In 12.18 he was MIA and the Winchesters had been trying to reach him (they didn’t know yet that he was in Heaven). In 7.18 they were also being “haunted” by Bobby, and just about to figure out the full truth of that situation and reaching out to Bobby. In 12.18 they were being “haunted” by Mary’s deal with the BMoL and were just about to figure out the full truth of that situation and reaching out to Mary…

For two seemingly throw-away episodes, there’s an awful lot going on here. If I weren’t too hopped up on cough medicine I’d go into more detail, but wheee at least I provided links for anyone interested in making connections for themselves. :P

 

 

[spn 7.18](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-7.18) [spn 12.18](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-12.18) [s12 hellatus rewatch](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/s12-hellatus-rewatch) [hey today's probably the last day i get to use that tag! after today i'll need an s13 meta rewatch tag...](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/hey-today%27s-probably-the-last-day-i-get-to-use-that-tag%21-after-today-i%27ll-need-an-s13-meta-rewatch-tag...) [performing dean](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/performing-dean) [we've been garthed :D](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/we%27ve-been-garthed-%3AD) [i know i had more to say on all of this but i've since been distracted by 7.20 and charlie so here you go](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/i-know-i-had-more-to-say-on-all-of-this-but-i%27ve-since-been-distracted-by-7.20-and-charlie-so-here-you-go)


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